Closing Bell: Bulls dominate Dalal Street on the first day of the new financial year

Domestic equity bourses Sensex and Nifty surged sharply higher on Friday to the first day of the trade on the new financial year on a positive note.

The Indian equity market finished the week on a higher note, led by gains in banking and power companies. Headline indices fell during initial deals today, but soon turned positive, bucking the downtrend in Asian markets, which traded lower on worries about the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war and increasing recession risk. Thus, the benchmark indices closed higher on the first day of the new financial year.

At the closing bell on April 1, the Sensex was up 708.18 points or 1.21% at 59,276.69, and the Nifty was up 205.70 points or 1.18% at 17,670.50. On the market breadth, 2564 shares have advanced, 645 shares declined, and 84 shares are unchanged.

The top Nifty gainers today were NTPC, BPCL, Power Grid Corporation, IndusInd Bank and SBI, while top losers include

Hero MotoCorp, SBI Life Insurance, Sun Pharma, Tech Mahindra and Titan Company.

All the sectoral indices closed in the green with auto, bank, oil & gas, realty, power and PSU Bank indices up 1-4%. In the broad market, BSE midcap and smallcap indices added over 1% each.

Among the buzzing stocks, Bharat Electronics (BEL) surged 2% after the company achieved a turnover of about Rs 15000 crore (Provisional & Unaudited), during the Financial Year 2021-22, against the previous year's turnover of Rs 13,818 crore, despite COVID-19 pandemic and global semiconductors shortage.

Bank of Baroda soared nearly 4% after bank completed the acquisition of 13,93,26,923 equity shares being the 21% stake of Union Bank of India in IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company Limited after receiving the regulatory approvals.

In the laggards, Ruchi Soya Industries shares fell 2% after the company fixed the issue price of its FPO. The board at its meeting has approved the issue price at Rs 650 per equity share for its follow-on public offer.