Indian stock markets ended the trade Monday on a positive note with benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty gaining more than one percent each on private weather forecaster Skymet's estimate that the country will receive above normal monsoon this year, ending two straight years of drought. The rally led by IT, telecom and bank stocks lifted Sensex by 348 points to 25,022, while the Nifty closed 116 points higher at 7,671.
Weather forecast
"Monsoon 2016 is likely to remain above than the normal at 105% (with an error margin of +/-4%) of the long period average (LPA) of 887 mm for the four-month period from June to September," said Skymet.
Monsoon probabilities for June, July, August and September (JJAS) are:
• 20% chance of excess (seasonal rainfall that is more than 110% of LPA)
• 35% chance of above normal (seasonal rainfall that is between 105 to 110% of LPA)
• 30% chance of normal (seasonal rainfall that is between 96 to 104% of LPA)
• 10% chance of below normal (seasonal rainfall that is between 90 to 95% of LPA)
• 5% chance of drought (seasonal rainfall that is less than 90% of LPA)
The biggest Sensex gainer was Adani Ports (up 4.54 percent), followed by Bharti Airtel, BHEL, Tata Motors, Wipro, TCS, Tata Steel, State Bank of India, NTPC and Axis Bank.
Tata Steel rose on the back of higher steel volume sales reported by the company for the March quarter and financial year 2015-2016.
Fourth quarter sales rose to 2.72 million tonnes from 2.41 million tonnes in the corresponding period last year, while annual sales increased to 9.54 million tonnes in 2015-16, up from 8.75 million tonnes in the previous financial year, the company said in a regulatory filing to the BSE last Friday.
L&T gained after the company informed the BSE that a wholly-owned subsidiary of the entity won orders worth $370 million to be executed for Petroleum Development Oman LLC, an oil exploration and production company. The L&T stock closed with a gain of 1.86 percent at Rs. 1,212.80.
On the Nifty, the top gainers were Idea, Bosch, Hindalco and Bank of Baroda, while stocks that declined were Lupin, Ambuja Cement and Dr Reddy's Labs.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net buyers of equities worth Rs. 107.23 crore.
The Indian rupee closed at 66.43 to the US dollar, a gain of five paise.
The week will be a truncated one for the stock markets in view of holidays for Baba Saheb Ambedkar Jayanti (Thursday) and Ram Navami (Friday).
