Stock market: Sensex, Nifty may hit new highs as BJP eyes hat-trick in 2024 elections

Indian equity benchmarks surged in Monday's early trade to scale their all-time highs, led by gains across all sectors. The 30-share BSE Sensex pack zoomed over 1,100 points to touch an all-time high of 68,587.82 and the NSE Nifty moved more than 300 points up to scale a fresh peak of 20,602.50. Broader market (mid- and small-cap) shares were also positive as Nifty Midcap 100 climbed 1.02 per cent and small-cap gained 1.06 per cent.

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) win in key state elections (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh) boosted investor sentiments. "The state elections results have turned out to be a big event which can trigger renewed optimism and further rally in the market. In the near-term the market will ignore fundamentals and move up but soon high valuations will trigger some selling," said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

On the global front, Asian markets opened higher today. Wall Street equities advanced on Friday.

Back home, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth Rs 1,589.61 crore during the previous session on a net basis and domestic institutional investors (DIIs) purchased shares worth Rs 1,448.08 crore.

All the 15 sector gauges -- compiled by the NSE -- were trading in the green. Sub-indexes Nifty Bank, Nifty Financial Services and Nifty Oil & Gas were outperforming the NSE platform by rising as much as 2.18 per cent, 2.10 per cent and 2.27 per cent, respectively.

On the stock-specific front, Adani Enterprises was the top gainer in the Nifty pack as the stock jumped 6.45 per cent to trade at Rs 2,515. Adani Ports, ICICI Bank, SBI and NTPC gained up to 5.04 per cent.

In contrast, Britannia Industries, Maruti and Dr Reddy's were among the top laggards.

The overall market breadth was positive as 2,409 shares were advancing while 616 were declining on BSE.

On the 30-share BSE index, index heavyweights such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, L&T, Reliance Industries and Infosys were among the top gainers.

Also, NLC India, Barbeque-Nation Hospitality, Adani Green Energy and Adani Power surged up to 11.36 per cent. On the flipside, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Kirloskar Ferrous Indus, KNR Constructions, Delta Corp and Chemplast Sanmar slipped up to 4.06 per cent.

Nifty outlook

"VIX is showing signs of bottoming out after languishing not far from record low for a substantial period of time, which had not let the traditional correlation between Nifty and VIX into play. We are now bracing for a 20 per cent rise in volatility here on, from 12.3 last recorded on Friday, thus elevating to a level where the correlation will become more meaningful," said Anand James, Chief Market Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

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