CLOSING BELL
Stock market highlights: A surprise dovish tone by the US Federal Reserve, where it said that the central bank is seeing progress in its fight against high inflation and is looking to slow the pace of rate hikes, cheered market bulls.
The S&P BSE Sensex staged a sharp uptick in the fag-end of the session, surging nearly 900 points to hit a fresh lifetime high of 62,412, before it settled at 62,273, higher by 762 points, or 1.24 per cent, relative to Wednesday's close.
The NSE Nifty50, too, topped the 18,500 level in the intra-day trade before it closed at 18,484, up 217 points or 1.19 per cent.
Infosys, Power Grid, Wipro, Tech M, HCL Tech, TCS, HDFC, Sun Pharma, HUL, and M&M were the top Sensex winners, rising between 1.5 per cent and 2.7 per cent. On the downside, Kotak Bank, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, and Tata Steel were the only losers, down up to 0.5 per cent.
In the broader markets, the BSE MidCap and SmallCap indices added 0.5 per cent, and 0.4 per cent, respectively. Among sectors, the Nifty IT index jumped 2.6 per cent, while Nifty FMCG and Financial Services index gained little over 1 per cent.
The Nifty Bank index, which settled 0.8 per cent higher, had hit a record high of 43,163.4 during the day.