Ahead of the RBI MPC meeting on Friday, the stock market climbed to a record high and closed in the green in a volatile session on Thursday.

At the close, the Sensex ended 350.81 points, or 0.47% higher at 74,227.63 while the Nifty 80 points or 0.36% at 22,514.70.

The top Nifty gainers were HDFC Bank, Eicher Motors, Asian Paints, Tech Mahindra, and Titan Company, while losers were ONGC, Shriram Finance, Adani Ports, BPCL and Bharti Airtel.

The domestic market witnessed volatility during the session but managed to end higher. Meanwhile, the Sensex, the Nifty 50, and the BSE Midcap indices hit their fresh all-time highs during the session.

The Sensex opened at 74,413.82 against its previous close of 73,876.82 while the Nifty 50 opened at 22,592.10 against its previous close of 22,434.65.

BSE Midcap index hit its all-time high of 40,973.14 during the day but failed to hold gains and ended 0.11% lower at 40,625.41, while the BSE Smallcap index closed with a gain of 0.54% at 45,803.97.

In a sector-wise analysis, bank, power, and information technology were up 0.5-1%, while the PSU bank and oil & gas index were down 0.7-1.6%.

The top performers at the Nifty were the Nifty Private Bank (up 1.12%), IT (up 1.08%) and Nifty Bank (up 0.92%) while among the losers were the Nifty Oil & Gas (down 1.37%), PSU Bank (down 0.70%) and FMCG (down 0.43%).

Notably, the overall market capitalisation of the firms listed on the BSE rose to nearly Rs 398.4 lakh crore from nearly Rs 397.4 lakh crore in the previous session, making investors richer by about Rs 1 lakh crore in a single session.

Among individual stocks, a volume spike of more than 300% was seen in Dabur India, Ipca Lab, and Exide Industries.

As many as 31 stocks ended in the green in the Nifty 50 index, while the remaining 19 ended lower.

Some of the key gainers were HDFC Bank (3.15%), Titan (1.95%) and Tech Mahindra (1.83%).

On the losing side were the shares of ONGC (2.12%), Adani Ports (2%), and Shriram Finance (1.80%).

HDFC Bank’s share price gained around 3.5% and the stock was the largest gainer amongst Nifty-50 stocks.

The bank’s business updates for the March quarter lifted the investor sentiments. The data also showed a decline in ownership by Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) during the March 2024 quarter.

The FII ownership in HDFC Bank, as of the March’2024 quarter at 47.83%, declined from 52.39% in the December’2023 quarter, according to the data.

Interestingly, the number of companies with a market cap in excess of Rs 1 trillion has burgeoned to 80 over the past fiscal. This figure marks a notable increase from FY23 when there were 48 firms with a market cap above Rs 1 trillion.

In FY24, billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries was the most valuable company with a market value of Rs 20.15 trillion, followed by Tata Consultancy Services at Rs 14.05 trillion, HDFC Bank at Rs 11 trillion, ICICI Bank at Rs 7.7 trillion and Bharti Airtel at Rs 7.44 trillion.