Nifty, Sensex near all-time intra-day highs on low inflation, FII inflows

Indian share benchmarks climbed towards all-time intra-day highs on Monday as investors took comfort from low inflation and a deluge of foreign fund inflows.

The weather office IMD’s forecast of a normal monsoon coupled with bulging granaries indicate to a benign inflation and faster industrial expansion, which is likely to boost India Inc’s earnings and improve stock valuation in the coming months.

The Sensex rose 170 points, or 0.56%, to 30,358 in early trade, shade lower than the intra-day life high 30,359 hit on May 11. The Nifty raced to 9,444.20, which is also close to all-time high of 9,449 touched during the trading hours last week.

The metal, realty, banking, FMCG, capital goods and PSU indices rose as much as 1%.

Both foreign and domestic investors were enthused by a low inflation number under the new data series that included more items and shifted the base to 2011-12 from the earlier 2004-05.

While the whole sale inflation (WPI) slowed to 3.85% in April from 5.3% from March, the retail or consumer price inflation (CPI) eased to 2.99% in April, the lowest under the new data series.

The industrial output under the new data series showed an expansion of 5% during 2016-17, from 3.4% in the previous year.