Famous Five lead market charge to record high as local, foreign buyers crowd Street

Five major stock indices closed at record highs on Monday as the Nifty rose 57.50 points to 8,879. The index is now just 2.6% shy of its all-time high level of 9,119 of March 2015. The Nifty Midcap index, BSE 500, Nifty 200, Nifty Energy and Nifty MNC index all closed at their record highs.

Broad-based Buying: Five major stocks, the HDFC twins, ITC, TCS and Maruti, have contributed 45% of the index’s gains since the current rally began December 2016. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) as well as domestic institutional investors have been buyers unlike last year when domestic fund buying was relatively muted between March and October.

Nifty Second-best Performer: The Nifty has gained nearly 12.2% year-to-date to emerge as the second-best performing index among the top 10 major markets by market capitalisation. Total market capitalisation of Indian equities is now $1.74 trillion, the highest since 2010.




Midcap Index Outperforms Nifty: In the last three rallies to 9,000 level from 8,000, the BSE Midcap index has outperformed the Nifty by 2-7% between 2014 and 2017. The BSE Midcap index is trading at 11% premium to Nifty on the basis of one-year forward earnings.