D-St indices surge nearly 2%, erasing year’s losses; foreigners return

India’s stock benchmarks surged as much as 2% on Thursday as traders, albeit wary of Donald Trump’s tariff flip-flops, cut some of their bearish bets ahead of a long weekend. This, coupled with renewed purchases by overseas investors, eased frayed nerves, helping indices post their best weekly gains in four years. With this spike, the indices erased losses made in the year to date. Exchanges will be shut for trading on Good Friday.

The NSE Nifty rose 414.45 points, or 1.8%, to close at 23,851.65. The BSE Sensex rose 1,508.91 points, or 2%, to end at 78,553.2. Both indices are up 4.5% in the shortened three-day trading week, their best weekly performance since February 2021-Monday had been closed for Ambedkar Jayanti. Banks led gains on Thursday with ICICI rising 3.7%, SBI advancing 3.3% and Kotak Mahindra moving up 3%.

Elsewhere in Asia, Japan rose 1.4%, China advanced 0.1%, Hong Kong was up 1.6%, and South Korea gained 0.9%. Taiwan dropped 0.7%. US markets were mixed in afternoon trading on Thursday, with the Dow Jones down 0.7% and the S&P 500 along with the Nasdaq trading marginally higher at press time, after Trump criticised US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and called for his “termination” for not cutting interest rates sooner. A day ago, Powell said he expects higher inflation and lower growth and the Fed is in a dilemma on where to focus.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank on Thursday cut interest rates for the seventh time in a year.

Rebound May be Short-lived

The Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.1% at the time of going to print.

At home, foreign portfolio investors bought shares worth a net ‘4,668 crore on Thursday, taking their purchase tally in three days to ‘14,973 crore. Domestic institutions were sellers to the tune of ‘2,006 crore. Some analysts expect the bounce to be short-lived. “We believe this is more of a trader’s market for now,” said Shrey Shah, global asset allocator at Ashika Global Family Office Services.