Nifty crosses 18 psychological levels after 44 days

FPIs bought shares of purely provisional value 3,304 crore, while DIIs made minor purchases 264 crore shares driving the benchmark.

Reliance, SBI, ITC and Wipro contributed to the gains rising between 2 and 3%.

after selling shares of value 1.4 lakh crore in FY22 and FIIs bought shares worth Rs 37,632 crore in FY23 11631 crore so far this month, shows NSDL data, which does not include Friday’s provisional figures. While he was a net seller in the last financial year, he bought shares worth Rs. 7936 crores in March.

Nifty fell nearly 11% from a record high of 18887.6 on 1 December to 16828 on 20 March. It has recovered 7.3% from its low till Friday’s 18065.

Besides contributing heavyweights, Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports were the gainers, with the former rising 3.72% from 3.2% in 1922 and later 681. Though being the top Nifty gainer their weight is not as significant as some of the other index constituents to move it materially.

Adani Enterprises witnessed physical buying with 16.23 lakh shares changing hands.

Rajesh Palvia, Technical Head of Research at Axis Securities expects Nifty to test 18200-18300 in near future on positive momentum domestically as well as globally.

“The results for banks, auto and FMCG companies have been in line with higher interest rates not eating into banks’ net interest margins, which is a good sign,” Palviya said. “It’s helping margins.”

Rohit Srivastava, founder, IndiaCharts, is bullish on the market and said that the current phase of rally was driven by FPIs buying in cash and reducing their large index futures short positions. And their index futures short positions are being covered to a great extent. These shorts pertain to Nifty and Bank Nifty futures.

The rollover of derivatives in the April series on Thursday was also below average, indicating that the market was light.

ram.sahgal@livemint.com