By Rituraj Baruah
Mumbai, Sep 1 (IANS) Firm global cues lifted the Indian equity market for the sixth consecutive week as both the key indices -- S&P BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty50 -- rose by over one per cent during the August 27-31 period.
Accordingly, the BSE Sensex hit an all time high of 38,989.65 points and the NSE Nifty50 touched a record level of 11,760.20 points. Both, Sensex and Nifty also set new respective closing highs of 38,896.63 points and 11,738.50 points during the week.
Global investor sentiments firmed up earlier in the week as US and Mexico reached an agreement on revising the North American Free Trade Agreement enforced since 1994.
The global development strengthened sentiments as trade-war concerns have off-late heightened investment risk across the globe, analysts told IANS.
The indices, however were subdued in the later part of the week as the Indian rupee slumped to unprecedented low levels against the US dollar and the fears over US-China trade war flared.
On a weekly basis, the S&P BSE Sensex closed at 38,645.07 points, higher 393.27 points or 1.03 per cent from its previous close.
Similarly, the wider Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange on Friday ended at 11,680.50 points, higher 123.40 points or 1.07 per cent from the previous week's close.
"Benchmark indices gained for the sixth week in a row on favourable global cues," said Rahul Sharma, Senior Research Analyst at Equity99.
Sharma, however added renewed US-China trade war concern capped gains.
According to Hem Securities' Director Prateek Jain, US-China tariff war hurt the emerging markets and also pushed the rupee to an all-time low.
The Indian rupee touched a new low of 71 per dollar on Friday. It settled at 70.99-71 per greenback, around Rs 1.09 weaker than the previous week's close of 69.91 per dollar.
In terms of investments, provisional figures from the stock exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors sold scrips worth Rs 579.20 crore and the domestic institutional investors bought stocks worth Rs 605.27 crore in the past week.
Figures from the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) showed that foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) invested Rs 46.36 crore, or $6.47 million in the equities segment during August 27-31.
Sector-wise, metal, IT and pharma stocks were the top gainers while the major losers were media and energy stocks, according to Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities.
The top weekly Sensex gainers were Power Grid (up 5.11 per cent at Rs 200.60), Tata Steel (up 4.55 per cent at Rs 601.65), Tata Motors (up 4.50 per cent at Rs 267.10), Infosys (up 4.35 per cent at Rs 1,440) and Bharti Airtel (up 4.03 per cent at Rs 383.35 per share).
The major losers were Yes Bank (down 8.34 per cent at Rs 343.40), Reliance Industries (down 2.90 per cent at Rs 1,240.95), Asian Paints (down 1.54 per cent at Rs 1,240.95), Coal India (down 1.48 per cent at Rs 286.10) and IndusInd Bank (down 1.21 per cent at Rs 1,903.85 per share).
(Rituraj Baruah can be contacted at rituraj.b@ians.in)
