Industries and investors cheered the RBI's move to sensationally surprise the street with a bigger-than-expected rate cut, but failed to garner widespread gains on late sell-off as the flagship Nifty rose 48 points and reclaimed 7,800 mark on the NSE here.
Despite the more-than-expected easing, market succumbed to frantic profit-taking toward the fag-end trade largely concerned about recent volatility and meltdown in global equities even as the apex bank lowered its economic growth forecast for the current fiscal to 7.4 per cent from its previous projection of 7.6 percent.
Taking comfort from US Fed rate hike delay and easing inflationary pressure, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its fourth bi-monthly monetary policy slashed the repo rate by 50 basis points to 6.75 per cent from 7.25 per cent - lowest in four-and-half-years, while keeping CRR and SLR unchanged.
This marks the fourth interest rate cut this year.
After a disappointing start, markets staged a strong rebound as rate sensitive stocks such as banking, auto and real estate recovered from their intraday low levels after the RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan sprang a surprise by cutting interest rates - higher-than-expected 50 basis points to boost growth amid global headwinds.
Bourses witnessed a big gap down opening with the Nifty plunging below 7,700 mark in a initial knee-jerk reactions to panic selling in markets across Asia following the overnight carnage in global equities and commodities.
The broader Nifty encountered a massive 235 points swing during the session.
Elsewhere in Asia, Nikkei collapsed 4.05 pct, HangSeng 2.97 pct, Shanghai 2.06 pct and Kospi 0.22 pct.
The 50-share index opened gap-down at 7,725.70 and fluctuated between 7,691.20 and 7,926.55 before finishing at 7,843.30, revealing a rise of 47.60 points, or 0.61 per cent.
Rate sensitive sectoral indices attracted good buying interest with Realty surging by (1.98 pc), PSU Bank (1.11 pc), Bank Nifty (1.06 pc) and Auto (0.84 pc). Other movers were Media, FMCG, Technology, Infra and Energy.
Mid-cap and Small-cap also gained marginally.
On the other hand, metal tumbled over 2.26 per cent impacted by global commodity rout, while Healthcare lost 1.12 per cent.
Biggest gainers were HDFC, HDFC Bank, Infosys, Maruti, L&T, M&M, Reliance, Indusind, Kotak Bank, Tata Motors, SBI, Zee, ITC, ICICI Bank, Asian Paints, Coal India and Yen Bank.
Key losers included Adani Ports, Bosch, Dr Reddys, Sun Pharma, Idea, Vedanta, Tata Steel, Lupin, Bharti and Hindalco.
Turnover in the cash segment shot-up to Rs 20,553.62 crore from Rs 14,179.93 crore yesterday. A total of 9,853.41 lakh shares changed hands in 8,668,444 trades and the total market capitalisation of NSE stood at Rs 93,58,885 crore.
