Nifty has crossed 18 thousand after 44 days

FPIs bought shares of purely provisional value 3,304 crore, while DII bought 264 crore worth of shares, outperforming the benchmark.

Reliance, SBI, ITC and Wipro contributed to the gains, rising between 2% and 3%. after selling shares of value 1.4 trillion in FY22 and 37,632 crore in FY23, FIIs bought shares worth Rs. 11,631 crore so far this month, shows NSDL data, which does not include Friday’s provisional figures. While FPIs were net sellers in the last financial year, they bought shares 7,936 crore in March.

The Nifty fell nearly 11% from a record high of 18,887.6 on December 1 to 16,828 on March 20. It has recovered 7.3% from its low till Friday’s 18065.

Besides contributing heavyweights, Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports were the gainers, with the former rising 3.72% 1,922 and onwards by 3.2% 681. Though being top Nifty gainers, their weight is not as significant as some other index constituents to move the index materially.

Adani Enterprises witnessed physical buying with 162.3 million shares changing hands.

Rajesh Palvia, head of technical, research, Axis Securities, expects Nifty to test 18,200-18,300 in the near term on positive momentum domestically and globally.

“The results for banks, auto and FMCG companies have been in line with higher interest rates not eating into banks’ net interest margins, which is a good sign,” Palviya said. “It’s helping margins.”

Rohit Srivastava, founder, IndiaCharts, is bullish on the markets and said the current phase of rally was driven by buying in cash by FPIs to substantially reduce their large index futures short positions and cover their index futures short positions. These shorts pertain to Nifty and Bank Nifty futures.

The rollover of derivatives in the April series on Thursday was also below the average roll, indicating that the market was light.