Sensex settles at 59,689; Nifty jumps 159 points

Sensex and Nifty rallied nearly 1 per cent on Wednesday as the benchmark indices closed in the positive territory for the fourth straight trading session on the back of gains in IT and financial shares.

A day ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy review, the 30-share BSE Sensex surged 582.87 points or 0.99 per cent to settle at 59,689.31 points.

As many as 21 stocks in the index ended in the green and nine in the red.

After a gap-up opening, the index touched a high of 59,747.12 points during the intra-day session.

The broader NSE Nifty jumped 159 points or 0.91 per cent to close above the 17,500 level at 17,557.05 points.

A total of 37 Nifty shares gained while 13 declined.

Among the Sensex stocks, Larsen & Toubro rose the most by 3.96 per cent after the company announced a major project win in the Middle East.

HDFC, HDFC Bank, Sun Pharma, ITC, HUL, Titan, TCS, HCL Tech, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, Infosys and Tata Steel were among the major gainers.

On the other hand, IndusInd Bank fell the most by 1.26 per cent, followed by Mahindra & Mahindra, NTPC, SBI and Maruti.

Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services, said the domestic market is displaying resilience, unaffected by the weaker global peers, thanks to strong banks and NBFCs' quarterly numbers, and the windfall tax cut.

RBI is expected to announce a 25 basis points rate hike in its policy announcement on Thursday before taking a pause, which will be a positive for the market, he added.

Global markets were mixed as Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 1.7 per cent while South Korea's Kospi rose 0.6 per cent.

Markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai were closed for holiday.

In Europe, Germany's DAX dipped 0.3 per cent, France's CAC 40 shed 0.2 per cent while the UK's FTSE 100 marginally rose 0.3 per cent in afternoon trade.

In the domestic market, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) were net buyers on Monday as they purchased shares worth Rs 321.93 crore.