Driven by sustained foreign fund inflows and stable crude oil prices, benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty traded higher following a volatile opening on Friday, with the BSE Sensex initially ticking up 33 points to 79,343.06 and the NSE Nifty dipping 52.95 points to 24,477.40 before accelerating later in the session to trade 443.87 points higher at 79,760.10 and 81 points higher at 24,612.85 respectively. Mahindra & Mahindra stood out among Sensex constituents, gaining over 4 per cent on the back of a 25 per cent growth in Q2 consolidated profit after tax at Rs 4,587.88 crore supported by robust auto revenue despite West Asian commodity pricing challenges, while Titan, HCL Tech, TCS, Infosys, and Bharti Airtel advanced alongside laggards like Asian Paints, Power Grid, Bajaj Finance, and Bharat Electronics. On the macroeconomic front, Brent crude rose 2.35 per cent to USD 100.6 per barrel, and FII investments reached Rs 14,974.68 crore on Thursday. Overseas, Asian markets including South Korea’s Kospi, Japan’s Nikkei 225, Shanghai’s SSE Composite, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng traded sharply lower in the wake of a steep Wall Street sell-off on Thursday where the Nasdaq tumbled 5.52 per cent, S&P 500 slid 4.36 per cent, and Dow Jones dropped 3.44 per cent. Geojit Investments Chief Investment Strategist V K Vijayakumar emphasized that India will likely be the least affected by the US market bloodbath, noting that the slowdown in AI-related trades will benefit India and that ongoing FII inflows totaling Rs 35,781 crore over the last five sessions will sustain market resilience against DII selling. This resilience extends a stellar six-session winning run where Sensex gained 6,063.98 points (8.27 per cent) and Nifty rallied 1,837.75 points (8 per cent), following Thursday’s record-breaking jump of 2,008.61 points (2.60 per cent) for Sensex to 79,310.01 and 576 points (2.40 per cent) for Nifty to 24,536.60. Enrich Money CEO Ponmudi R observed that the overnight unwinding of AI trades and semiconductor losses dragged US benchmarks into correction territory and pulled down Asian markets, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi falling over 5 and 6 per cent respectively amid widespread risk-off sentiment.
