Market advances for 4th day; Sensex closed up by 0.4% & Nifty closed at 11,938

Sensex Today: The benchmark indices ended the roller coaster session with decent gains on Wednesday, October 21, 2020. The market opened in green but during the day, weak global cues led to a correction in the market. But finally, during the last hour, there was news that the Government is working on a relief package that led to a rally in the market.

The S&P BSE Sensex gained 162.94 points or 0.40 per cent at 40,707.31. The Nifty 50 index added 40.85 points or 0.34 per cent at 11,937.65. Similarly, the Nifty Bank went up 323.25 points or 1.33 per cent to 24,635.05. The broader market at BSE also climbed outperforming the Sensex. The BSE Mid-Cap index surged 0.23 per cent and the BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.03 per cent.

The market breadth was positive. On the BSE, 1376 shares rose and 1287 shares fell. Similarly, 30 shares advanced in the case of Nifty 50, while 20 shares declined. The major gainers on Nifty 50 block were Power Grid (up 4.52 per cent), Bharti Airtel (up 3.58 per cent), Tata Steel (up 2.88 per cent), Hindalco (up 2.74 per cent) and GAIL (up 2.51 per cent). The major losers were Britannia (down 4.26 per cent), TCS (down 2.23 per cent), SBI Life (down 1.96 per cent), Hero MotoCorp (down 1.76 per cent) and Nestle India (down 1.70 per cent).

Union Cabinet Decisions

The Union Cabinet approved productivity linked bonus and non-productivity linked bonus for 2019-2020. A total of 30.67 lakh non-gazettes employees will benefit from the bonus announcement and total financial implication will be Rs 3,737 crore.

COVID-19 update

India reported 740,090 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 115,914 deaths while 6,795,103 patients have been discharged, data showed. Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide were at 40,728,371 with 1,123,967 deaths, data showed.

The US and Package

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have made good progress during talks, before adding that they still have a ways to go before an agreement is reached.

Global Markets

Dow Futures and Nasdaq Futures were flat, whereas FTSE was down by 1.1 per cent. Next few days, market action will be dependent on the result announcement, global cues and news around the relief package planned by the Government.