Nifty, Sensex Gain For The Third Straight Session; Fed Conference Eyed

Indian equity benchmarks gained for the third straight session early on Thursday, and were heading toward weekly gains for the sixth week in a row, tracking a broad upswing in broader Asian stocks.

The 30-share BSE Sensex index gained 269.68 points, or 0.46 per cent, to 59,355.11, and the NSE Nifty index was 77.95 points, or 0.44 per cent, higher at 17,682.90, tracking Asian share markets, which were broadly positive while the dollar was slightly weaker on Thursday.

From the Sensex pack, Tata Steel, State Bank of India, IndusInd Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Titan, Bajaj Finserv, Bharti Airtel and Axis Bank were among the lead gainers.

HCL Technologies emerged as the only laggard.

Among the Nifty 50 stocks, 43 traded on a positive note with rest 7 in the red, National Stock Exchange data showed.

Top performing stocks this morning were Bharti Airtel, SBI Life, Tata Steel, Tata Motors, and UPL, trading in a range of 0.9-1.6 per cent.

Bharti Airtel rose as much as 2 per cent after Singapore Telecommunications Ltd said it would sell a 3.3 per cent stake in Airtel to Bharti Telecom for an aggregate consideration of about $1.61 billion.

IT stocks gained, leading the Nifty IT index up 0.5 per cent , after ending lower for the past three sessions.

"The resilience of the Indian market even amidst global volatility can be attributed mainly to two factors: One, the strong growth momentum in the economy and two, the steady foreign fund flows even when the Dollar has been appreciating," V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, told ANI.

Since July, foreign portfolio investors infused over Rs 50,000 crore worth of equities in India, National Securities Depository data showed.

Both the equity benchmarks ended Wednesday with marginal gains and extended their fag-end winning streak trend to the second straight day.

Barring minor losses incurred earlier this week, Indian stocks have extended their bull run for the sixth straight week and managed to recover the entire losses made this year before the recent rally.

Still, investors were jittery ahead of the US Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole conference for clues on how sharp future interest rate hikes might be.

The annual Jackson Hole, Wyoming, meeting of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee is scheduled to begin on Friday.

Investors now expect the Fed Funds rate to peak at 3.80 per cent in March 2023, up from 3.62 per cent a fortnight ago, Tapas Strickland, NAB's economics director, told Reuters.

"Market moves at least are consistent with the hawkish pushback seen by Fed officials over recent weeks," he added.

The dollar index, which measures the value of the dollar against a basket of other significant trading partners' currencies, fell marginally in Asia to 108.51, edging back from near a two-decade peak 

"Expectations of a hawkish message from FOMC Chair Powell at Jackson Hole will likely keep upward pressure on the US dollar in the run‑up to his speech on Friday," Commonwealth Bank analysts wrote in a client note.

"However there is a risk that the speech is deemed not hawkish enough and that we see some retracement in the US dollar."