Stock Market Live Updates: Sensex Around 60k, Nifty Above 17,800; It Drags, Bajaj Twins Up 4%

Stock Market Highlights: Indian equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty50 extended gains to the fourth session in a row on Wednesday, though volatility persisted amid concerns about increasing cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

So on the consumption names, we’ve seen the impact of higher input costs, the raw material impact being finally priced in, and even the likes of HUL, and all that are finding it quite difficult to pass on prices to consumers…

Prashanth Tapse, Vice President at Mehta Equities, said all bullish eyes are on the Nifty’s all-time high of 18,605.

So any slippage, any letdown in those numbers, from the kind of high expectation it has to meet up with is always the opportunity to buy and not when the numbers actually meet expectations.

The way the topline has been growing, it is resulting into expectation of margins going up for the company.

It had corrected almost 20 percent till last week but in the last one week, it has moved up 7-8 percent or so,” he said.

In the midcap segment, valuations are on a higher side compared to their historical averages on the largecaps, but probably such kind of valuations were there 10-15 years ago, if not in the recent past,” he said.

One need to take really stock-specific view in this because if these companies that are able to give you 15 percent-plus or higher teens kind of growth, such kind of multiple is sustainable.

To understand whether any of these can become brakes to growth, CNBC-TV18’s Latha Venkatesh spoke to Samiran Chakraborty, Chief Economist-India at Citi.

“The Omicron threat is looming over the economy.

Indian Oil, BPCL, Eicher Motors, Axis Bank and Tata Steel were also among the top gainers.

The 30-scrip index ended 367.2 points or 0.6 percent higher at 60,223.2 and the broader Nifty50 benchmark settled at 17,925.3, up 120 points or 0.7 percent from its previous close.

Government officials said the Centre continues to monitor domestic air traffic on a daily basis, and needs to assess more data on weekend travel before taking any measures.

Norbert Rucker, Head Economics and Next Generation Research at Julius Baer, believes confidence has returned to the oil market with the New Year as prices climb above the $80 per barrel level.

In China, with the coal supply and energy crunch largely having eased, and the real estate sector under pressure, oil use looks unlikely to swell much.

Shares of pharmaceutical and healthcare companies rallied on Wednesday amid a spike in cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in India and the emergence of a new strain ‘IHU variant’ in France.

Aster DM Healthcare, Tata Communications, Greaves Cotton, Chambal Fertilisers & Chemicals and Hikal were also among the top gainers in the BSE 500 pack.

IT stocks from the likes of Tata Consultancy Services , Infosys and Wipro succumbed to selling pressure on Wednesday, as investors geared up for the onset of the quarterly earnings season in the coming days.

HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra, Mphasis, Mindtree, L&T Infotech, L&T Technologies and Coforge were down between 1.9 percent and 3.1 percent.

India, per se, I think the next couple of years, the next three years, we are going to see a good growth, earnings are likely to go up by 15-20 percent on an average, and there is a lot of value in the mid and small cap space even now.

Delhi is likely to report as many as 10,000 Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, said city health minister Satyendar Jain, adding that the national capital’s daily positivity rate will inch closer to 10 per cent.

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