BSE Sensex surges 333 points as rupee rebounds, RIL jumps

The BSE Sensex retreated from one-week lows on Wednesday, soaring nearly 333 points on value buying in bluechips like ICICI Bank, TCS and RIL in step with the recovery in rupee's value.

The rupee, which fell to intra-day lows of 68.6 levels, was trading at 67.1 levels against the US dollar on suspected Reserve Bank of India (RBI) intervention.

In order to encourage capital flows, RBI has also eased the external commercial borrowing norms by allowing companies to use funds raised from foreign partners for general corporate purposes.

"Slight recovery of rupee along with appointment of new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, boosted the market sentiment. RBI was seeing taking fresh measures to curb currency weakening. Value buying after yesterday's panic selling also helped the market to recover," said Nidhi Saraswat, Senior Research Analyst, Bonanza Portfolio Limited.

After a steep fall of nearly 4 per cent in the previous session, the Sensex spurted by 332.89 points, or 1.83 per cent, to 18,567.55 on funds buying, as investors judged Tuesday's sharp fall as excessive.

On similar lines, the broad-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty jumped up by 106.65 points, or 2 per cent, to 5,448.10 backed by stocks of metal, pharma and auto sectors.

Also, SX40 index, the flagship index of MCX-SX, ended at 10,966.82, up 124.41 or 1.15 per cent.

Among Sensex constituents, Reliance Industries shot up by 2.32 per cent to Rs 849.35 after dropping the most in more than four years on Tuesday. Infosys rose by 2.37 per cent to a record high of Rs 3,105.90.

Sectorally, the BSE metal sector index gained the most by rising 2.75 per cent to 8,023.59, followed by healthcare index by 2.60 per cent to 9,070.30. Auto sector index rose by 2.47 per cent to 10,330.56 and IT index by 2.15 per cent to 8,095.94.

Bucking the firming tend, stocks of real estate firms fell after RBI asked banks to link the disbursal of home loans to their stages of construction.

With inputs from PTI