Yahoo Finance India's Nifty 50 posts record close, longest weekly rally of 2024
By Bharath Rajeswaran and Hritam Mukherjee
BENGALURU (Reuters) -India's blue-chip Nifty 50 notched another record closing high on Friday, shrugging off a slide in HDFC Bank, and chalked up its fifth straight week of gains, its longest such streak this year.
The NSE Nifty 50 rose 0.09% on the day to end at 24,323.85 as gains in energy stocks helped it notch a record closing high for the fourth time this week.
The S&P BSE Sensex settled 0.07% lower at 79,996.6 points, but still managed to mirror both the Nifty's 1.2% rise this week and a fifth consecutive week of gains.
Still, the benchmarks got off to a rocky start on the day as HDFC Bank, the heaviest-weighted stock on the indexes, tumbled 4.6% after posting a disappointing quarter financial update.
The lackluster session is also an initial sign of investors' exhaustion near record-high levels, said Sameet Chavan, head of research at Angel One.
The IT index, a relative underperformer over the year, jumped 4.3% this week, its biggest such rise in four, as soft U.S. economic data bolstered expectations of a rate cut in September.
Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech and market-leader TCS rose between 2.7% and 5.2%, among the top Nifty gainers this week.
IT companies, which earn a significant share of their revenue from the U.S., have rallied for a third straight week and will remain in focus with U.S. non-farm payrolls data due later on Friday and as TCS kicks off the earnings next Thursday.
But before earnings take centre stage, the Nifty will drift along, said Narendra Solanki, head of fundamental research of investment services at Anand Rathi.
Reliance Industries rose more than 2% on the day to a record high after Nomura listed it as one of the seven global stocks likely to gain from the energy transition.
Reliance, along with ONGC's 4% jump on block deals, helped boost energy stocks nearly 2% on the day.
The small-caps and mid-caps rose about 0.8% each.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran and Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee, Mrigank Dhaniwala, Janane Venkatraman and Savio D'Souza)
