Sensex shoots up over 600 pts; Nifty tops 11,650 level

Mumbai: Equity benchmarks defied gravity for the fourth successive session on Tuesday as investors piled into finance and banking counters amid firm global cues following US President Donald Trump's discharge from hospital.

Encouraging macroeconomic data and anticipation of healthy Q2 results further buoyed sentiment, traders said.

The BSE Sensex zoomed 600.87 points or 1.54 per cent to close at 39,574.57.

Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty climbed 159.05 points or 1.38 per cent to end at 11,662.40.

HDFC was the top performer in the Sensex pack, surging 8.35 per cent, after the mortgage lender said its individual loan disbursements in the second quarter of 2020-21 reached 95 per cent of the year-ago level and September saw the strongest recovery since the COVID-19 outbreak.

Other prominent gainers were IndusInd Bank, Mahindra and Mahindra, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank and Ultratech Cement.

HDFC and HDFC Bank accounted for over half of the Sensex's gains.

On the other hand, Tata Steel, Nestle India, Larsen & Toubro, Sun Pharma, NTPC and Reliance Industries slipped up to 1.26 per cent.

On the macroeconomic front, India's service sector output broadly stabilised in September but remained in the contraction zone as incoming new business fell moderately due to the damaging impact of the pandemic on demand, leading to more job losses.

In the broader markets, the BSE midcap and small cap indices spurted up to 0.59 per cent, underperforming the benchmark.

On the forex market front, the Indian rupee dropped by 17 paise to close at 73.46 per US dollar.

Foreign investors bought equities worth a net Rs

236.71 crore in the Indian markets on Monday, exchange data showed.