Indian equity benchmarks staged a sharp rally on Monday morning, riding a steep fall in crude oil prices and a broadly encouraging earnings season, even as caution lingered over West Asia's fragile geopolitical truce.
The BSE Sensex touched a morning high of 78,895.10, up around 800.46 points from Friday's close of 78,094.64, while the NSE Nifty scaled 24,592.45, gaining roughly 208.85 points over its previous close of 24,383.60.
The rally was driven chiefly by a sharp retreat in oil prices, with Brent crude sliding nearly 5 to 7 per cent to trade below $84 a barrel, after US President Donald Trump signalled that talks with Iran would resume on Monday, reviving hopes of a diplomatic resolution to the recent military tensions in the region.
Domestic crude futures on the Multi Commodity Exchange mirrored the global slide, tumbling more than 6 per cent to hit their lower circuit, as traders unwound positions built up during weeks of supply-risk premiums linked to the Strait of Hormuz.
Lower oil prices are a significant positive for India, a major energy importer, and this, combined with continued foreign institutional buying and a broadly shock-free June-quarter earnings season, lifted investor sentiment across the board.
Financial stocks led the charge, with Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv gaining around 3 per cent each on the back of strong results, while ITC rose sharply after brokerages viewed its cigarette volume performance positively despite a dip in quarterly profit. Urban Company surged after reporting a sharp jump in first-quarter revenue.
Sun Pharma and Maruti featured among the morning laggards. Notably, Zee Entertainment fell sharply after markets regulator SEBI imposed a combined penalty of ₹1.48 crore on the company, its chief executive and chairman emeritus, and barred CEO Punit Goenka and founder Subhash Chandra from the securities market for one year over alleged securities-law violations.
