Sensex, Nifty open in green on Thursday, Jan 5; HPCL shares rise nearly 3%, Marico shares up over 2%
Indian equity indices opened in green on the weekly F&O expiry day. The NSE Nifty rose 70.89 points or 0.39% to 18,113.80 and BSE Sensex climbed 183.02 points or 0.30% to 60,840.47.
The top Nifty gainers were Britannia, Tata Consumer Products Ltd, ITC, Bajaj Auto and Sun Pharma while Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Power Grid, Apollo Hospitals and Infosys were the top losers.
HPCL, Marico shares in focus today
Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) shares rose 2.95% to Rs 248.10 after the company forayed into the petrochemical business with pre-marketing of ‘HP Durapol’ brand of polymers, which is a precursor to the marketing of HPCL Rajasthan Refinery (HRRL) petrochemical products. HRRL sees a 9-MMTPA-capacity grassroot refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Pachpadra in Rajasthan. On the other hand, Marico Ltd shares rose 2.32% to Rs 518 after the company’s consolidated revenue in Q3FY23 grew in the low single digits on an on-year basis. As there has been some semblance of stability in crucial input prices and consumer pricing across key franchises, gross and operating margins are expected to improve both on a sequential and on-year basis.
Sectoral Indices
In the sectoral indices, Nifty Bank was up 0.10%, Nifty Pharma was up 0.56%, Nifty IT was up 0.05%, Nifty PSU Bank was up 0.49% while Nifty FMCG was up 1.31% and Nifty Metal was up 0.62%. The volatility index India VIX was down 1.59%.
Asian and US stock markets
In other Asian markets China’s Shanghai composite index rose 27.47 points or 0.88% to 3,150.99 on Thursday and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 296.08 points or 1.42% to 21,089.19. The US stock market concluded the overnight session marginally in the green.
FII and DII data
Foreign institutional investors (FII) sold shares worth a net Rs 2620.89 crore while domestic institutional investors (DII) purchased shares worth a net Rs 773.58 crore on Wednesday, January 4, 2023, according to the data available on NSE.