Sensex crosses 24,000 Nifty above 7,100

Mumbai 13 May 2014:

Driven by hopes of a stable, business-friendly and policy reform-oriented government at the Centre, the BSE Sensex rallied over 500 points in trade on Tuesday to hit its fresh lifetime high of 24068.94, and the Nifty topped the 7,150 levels in intra-day trades after exit poll results showed that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is expected to win India’s general elections comfortably.

At 2:30PM, the 30-share Sensex was up 339 points at 23,890 after hitting a record high of 24,069 and the 50-share Nifty was up 104 points at 7,118 after touching a record high of 7,172.35. The Indian rupee also gained sharply against the dollar after exit polls showed that the BJP-led NDA would form the government at the centre.

“The Modi wave seems to be real after all, vote share for the Congress might just be the weakest since 1977, and regional parties do have a role to play, albeit marginal,” Religare Institutional Research said in a note. The markets would see a jump on confirmation of the new government, with our expectation of 5-10 per cent, added the report.

“We are still maintaining our year-end Nifty target of 8000 and for the Sensex we expect the index to test the higher level of 26500,” the report said.

“We could see the markets touching 7800 to 8000 levels on the Nifty, just after the results on May 16. If these numbers were to come true, you could see the markets fly,” said Manish Sonthalia, Sr Vice President & Head-Equity Portfolio Management Services, Motilal Oswal Asset Management-PMS.