Market Wrap Podcast, Aug 13: Here's all that happened in the markets today

The benchmark indices ended a historic week for the market with a bang as Sensex vaulted past 55,000 mark for the first time today while Nifty crossed both 16,400 and 16,500 levels in a single-day.

Led by a strong rally in IT stocks, RIL and HDFC twins, the 30-pack Sensex settled at 55,437, up 593 points or 1.08 per cent after hitting all-time high of 55,488 in trade. Meanwhile, the 50-pack Nifty closed the day 165 points or 1.01 per cent higher at 16,529. The index rose to a record high of 16,544 earlier. In the last five sessions, Nifty has closed in the green, taking its winning run to second week straight, up nearly 2 per cent.

Broader markets, however, continued to languish. The indices erased gains to end marginally lower, thus skewing the market breadth in favour of sellers. The BSE Midcap index lost 0.06 per cent and BSE Smallcap 0.01 per cent. For the week, both indices ended lower for the four of five trading days.

Sectorally, Nifty IT was the top performer as the index heavyweights -- TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech and Wipro -- witnessed heavy buying, driving Nifty IT to new high. Buying was also visible in FMCG and financial services. Media and realty sectors although saw profit taking.

TCS and HCL Tech stocks too hit their record peaks in trade today, with TCS market cap briefly crossing Rs 13 trillion mark. The stock closed the day at Rs 3462 on BSE after rising to a new peak of Rs 3479.35. HCL Tech's market cap swelled to Rs 3 trillion for the first time as stock touched all-time high of Rs 1123.90. It shut shop at Rs 1119.70 on BSE.  

Another largecap stock Airtel jumped to its fresh record high today after the company announced the closure of its agreement with Reliance Jio Infocomm to transfer the 'Right to Use' of Airtel's 800 MHz spectrum in three circles to Jio for which it received Rs 1,004.8 crore from Jio. The stock rose to Rs 638.60 and settled at Rs 637.

Wockhardt shares also rallied, up 5 per cent on BSE at Rs 512 after the company said it has entered into an agreement with Russian Direct Investment Fund arm Enso Healthcare to make 620 million doses of the Sputnik V and Sputnik Light vaccines over the next two years.

Now, going into trade next week, investors will eye macroeconomic data like WPI inflation and Balance of Trade data that are slated to be out on Monday, August 16. That said, with the earnings season over, global cues will mainly guide the market trajectory from here on.

Further, four companies Devyani International, Exxaro Tiles, Windlas Biotech and Krsnaa Diagnostics will list on the bourses next week. All four IPOs had received strong response from investors with Devyani subcribed 116 times, followed by Krsnaa that received 64 times bids while Windlas Biotech and Exxaro Tiles garnered 22 times subscription each.