It appears the Diwalfestival has come early for Dalal Street bulls, as Indian stock market remained higher for the third straight session on Friday, October 17. Banking stocks continued to lead the key indices, pushing them to their highest levels since October 2024. In addition, FMCG stocks, along with a surge in auto stocks, supported the markets in crossing key levels.
Though the front-line indices closed the session higher, they gave up most of the earlier gains, with Nifty 50 settling with a 0.49% gain at 25,709 level, marking its highest level since October 2024 and the S&P BSE Sensex also rose 0.58% to reach 83,985 points.
The recent run up has supported both indices record weekly gains of over 1.6%, their best in last 2 months.
In terms of sector-wise performance, the Nifty FMCG index stood out, rallying 1.37%, followed by the Nifty Consumer Durables and Nifty Pharma indices, which gained 0.70% each.
The Nifty Auto index also picked up momentum, ending 0.66% higher, while the Nifty Oil & Gas and Nifty Realty indices closed marginally higher. Nifty IT was the worst performer among the key sectoral indices, falling 1.63%, followed by Nifty Media, which lost 1.56% of its value.
