Snapping a three-day fall, the Sensex on Thursday jumped by nearly 208 points on heavy buying in realty, banking and capital goods shares as core inflation in February fell below 4 per cent mark for the first time in nearly 3 years fuelling hopes of rate cut by RBI on March 19.
The Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share barometer, which was down by 183 points at 19,179.33 in morning deals, bounced back and was up by over 425 points to touch a high of 19,604.70 from the day's low after inflation data was released.
The index finally ended higher by 207.89 points or 1.07 per cent at 19,570.44. In last three days, Sensex had slumped by 320.68 points or 1.63 per cent.
Though WPI inflation rose marginally to 6.84 per cent in February driven by costlier food items and petrol, but investors chose to focus on the core inflation number triggering a wave of buying, said traders.
On similar lines, the broad-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty regained 5,900 level by rising 57.75 points, or 0.99 per cent to end at 5,908.95.
“While the headline inflation print came higher than expectations at 6.84 per cent, the continued moderation in core inflation kept the market expectation alive that RBI would cut the repo rate by 0.25 per cent coming Tuesday,” said Amar Ambani, Head of Research, India Infoline limited.
In 30-share Sensex, 24 stocks led by SBI (3.51 per cent), Maruti (3.43 pc), ICICI Bank (2.29 pc) and HDFC Bank (2.28 pc) and l&T (1.92 pc) ended in positive territory. Others like RIl, l&T, TCS, HUl, Infosys and Tata Power also closed up.While 1,420 stocks rose and 1,446 counters fell in overall BSE platform, investor wealth rose by Rs50,000 crore to Rs66.94 lakh crore.Besides, brokers said