Mumbai: The equity market opened on a strong note on Monday, with benchmark index Sensex jumping by 344 points amid positive investor sentiments and mixed global cues. The 30-share BSE Sensex surged by 344.92 points or 0.58 percent to end at 59,480.05 points while the broader NSE Nifty climbed by 108.05 points or 0.62 percent to settle at 17,520.95 points. As many as 20 stocks in the Sensex pack were trading with gains.
For the second consecutive trading session on Friday, Sensex closed in the red, tanking 671.15 points or 1.12 percent to 59,135.13 points. The Nifty too plunged 176.70 points or one percent to end the day at 17,412.90 points. On Friday, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth Rs 2,061.47 crore.
Notwithstanding concerns over the fallout of the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank in the US, investor sentiments were relatively strong amid growth in industrial output in January and expectations that the US Federal Reserve might opt for less aggressive rate hike approach.
India's industrial output rose 5.2 percent in January, as per the official data released after market hours on Friday. On Monday, most of the Asian markets were in the green while American and European markets closed in the negative territory on Friday as investor sentiments were hit by the Silicon Valley Bank crisis.
V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said that the Silicon Valley Bank issue is unlikely to rattle the markets for long.
"A possible positive impact of the Silicon Valley Bank crisis is that it may nudge the US Federal Reserve to go less hawkish since the aggressive rate hike by the Fed lies at the root of the SVB crisis.
"If the US CPI inflation data tomorrow indicates a declining trend in inflation, the Fed is unlikely to raise rates by 50 bp in the March 22 meeting. That will be a positive from the market perspective," he noted.
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