With foreign institutional investors (FII) now shopping for Indian stocks, the benchmark BSE Sensex ended in green for a second straight week on Friday. FIIs purchased shares worth R415 crore on Friday, BSE?s provisional figures showed. They have picked up shares worth $2.29 billion in March, taking the net inflows in the year to $0.18 billion, taking the Friday?s provisional figures into account

Meanwhile, the market ended flat on friday, the first trading session of the new fiscal. The key indices declined slightly to snap an eight-session winning streak even as most of their regional peers in Asia Pacific posted gains. Domestic institutional investors are understood to have sold shares worth R412 crore as the market swung between losses and gains. The BSE Sensex finally closed at 19,420, down by 24 points or 0.13%, while the broader 50-share Nifty of NSE was down 7.7 points or 0.13% at 5826. Shankar Sharma, joint MD, First Global, said,?The current rally is not surprising as we have sharply underperformed the global markets since November and so there was some catching up to do.? Sharma observes that the markets had become attractive after the correction as a result of which buying has resurfaced.

The benchmark BSE Sensex has climbed for the second straight week, gaining 3.2%, surging 9.1% in March, the biggest monthly gain since September. On Friday, most of the key benchmark equity indices in Asia Pacific ended in the green. Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng Index were among the major winners, both gaining by more than a percentage point each. Japan?s Nikkei 225 was the only index to buck the trend and declined about half a percentage point.

Back home, 16 of the 30 Sensex stocks were gainers. In the broader market, breadth was strong with 74% or 2178 stocks traded on the BSE ending higher compared with 682 declines. Many of the BSE sectoral indices recorded modest gains, with the Realty index rising the most at 2.6%. The Bankex index declined the most at 0.83%.

The NSE cash turnover was at R11,691 crore while the six monthly daily average was about R14,800 crore. Turnover in derivatives was R86,302 crore and the daily average for the past six months is R1.33 lakh crore. India VIX, a volatility index based on the S&P CNX Nifty index option prices, declined 9% to 20.11. VIX is a measure of the market’s expectation of volatility over the near term and increases when the market is bearish.