After posting the highest weekly-fall in seven years last week, Indian stock markets staged a rally on Monday, tracking cues from global equity markets. An oversold market position also helped the markets stage a pullback rally.
The S&P BSE Sensex gained 568 points, its biggest single-day gain in the past one year, to close at 23,554.12, while the NSE Nifty settled at 7,162.95, up 182 points, or 2.61 percent.
The Sensex opened higher from its previous closing of 22,986, and rose 636 points during the day, but later trimmed gains on profit-booking.
The biggest gainer of the day on the BSE was state-owned lender Bank of Baroda, whose shares rose 22.04 percent to end the day at Rs 139.55.
The second biggest lender of the country had posted a net loss of Rs 3,342 crore for the quarter ended December 2015, the biggest-ever quarterly loss by an Indian bank. The bank had registered a net profit of Rs 333.98 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.
Tata Steel shares closed 13 percent higher at RS 246.20, followed by Larsen & Toubro (up 9 percent) and State Bank of India (up 7.94 percent). Other top Sensex gainers included Adani Ports, Coal India, Axis Bank, Tata Motors, M&M and ICICI Bank.
The markets clearly shrugged the weak IIP data that showed contraction in December and retail inflation that rose to a 17-month high in January 2016.
On the NSE, Bank of Baroda was the biggest Nifty gainer with a gain of 23 percent. Other shares that staged a comeback on the benchmark index included Vedanta, Tata Steel and Hindalco.
Among the sectoral indices on the NSE, the Nifty Metal index was the biggest gainer, up 9.84 percent, followed by the PSU Bank index, up 9.57 percent.
The advance-decline ratio was 45:4 in favour of advances.
Indian stock markets mirrored Asian equity markets that rebounded on Monday, tracking the US markets that gained following a rally in banking stocks and the largest single day rise in crude oil prices in four years last Friday.
European stock markets were also trading on a firm note on Monday, with Germany's DAX gaining 2.5 percent and French CAC40 rallying 3 percent.
(1 crore = 10 million)
