India’s Sensex closes over 58,000 mark

Mumbai: The bull run on D-Street continued on Friday with equity benchmark indices rising half a per cent to touch new highs.

At the closing bell, the BSE S&P Sensex was up by 277 points or 0.48 per cent at 58,130 while the Nifty 50 rose by 89 points or 0.52 per cent to 17,324. Sectoral indices were mixed with Nifty financial service, private bank and FMCG down marginally. But Nifty metal rose by 1.2 per cent, auto and realty by 1 per cent each, and IT by 0.6 per cent.

Among stocks, Reliance Industries jumped by 4.1 per cent to Rs 2,389.65 per share with industry sources saying its market capitalisation rose above Rs 15 lakh crore after Reliance Retail took controlling stake in Just Dial.

ONGC moved up by 4 per cent, Coal India by 3.5 per cent and IndianOil Corporation by 2.5 per cent. Hero MotoCorp rose by 2.5 per cent, Bajaj Auto and Maruti Suzuki by 1.1 per cent each, and Tata Motors by 0.6 per cent.

The other major gainers were Kotak Mahindra Bank, Grasim, Dr Reddy's, JSW Steel and Infosys. But among the losers were HDFC Life, Cipla, Bharti Airtel, Hindustan Unilever and HDFC.

Meanwhile, Asian share markets were mixed as concerns lingered over the Chinese economy after a run of soft data.

Japan's Nikkei added 2.05 per cent while South Korea's Kospi gained 0.79 per cent. But Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell by 0.72 per cent.