The benchmark indices touched their lifetime highs on Friday amid an interest-rate cut by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and expectations of quantitative easing (QE) from the European Central Bank (ECB).

The 30-share Sensex touched a life-time high of 28360.66 points, while the 50-share S&P CNX Nifty just missed the 8,500-mark by 10.2 points.
On Friday, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth $20 million, while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth $22 million, according to provisional data on the exchanges. YTD, FIIs have bought over $15 billion worth of shares.

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According to a Reuters report, China cut rates to prop up growth in China as it was heading towards its slowest growth in nearly a quarter century. The cut—the first such move by the PBoC in over two years—came as factory growth has stalled and the property market, long a pillar of growth, had remained weak, dragging on broader activity and curbing demand for everything from furniture to cement and steel.

Meanwhile, the ECB President Mario Draghi, said, “ … if on its current trajectory our policy is not effective enough to achieve this (inflation), or further risks to the inflation outlook materialise, we would step up the pressure and broaden even more the channels through which we intervene, by altering accordingly the size, pace and composition of our purchases.”

On Friday, the 30-share Sensex ended higher by 267.07 points or 0.95% to 28,334.63 points, while the broader 50-share Nifty ended with gains of 75.45 points or 0.9% at 8,477.35 points.

The market rally was led by hefty gains in banking stocks with Bank Nifty hitting lifetime high of 18,139.95 points. Yes Bank (4.01%), Federal Bank (3.95%), Kotak Bank (3.68%) and Punjab National Bank (2.89%) were among the major gainers. Kotak Bank shares touched lifetime high of 1,260.90 points after the bank announced an all-share merger deal with ING Vysya Bank.

The benchmark indices advanced in 3 out 5 trading sessions and the BSE Sensex ending higher by 1.02% or 287.97 points. This was the 5th straight positive week for Sensex.

24 of the 30 Sensex stocks ended in the green on Friday. In the broader market, the breadth was weak with 1643 stocks traded on the BSE ending lower compared with 1373 advances. Most of the 12 BSE sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE Bankex (2.37%), BSE Capital Goods (1.32%) and fBSE Consumer Durables (0.84%) were among the major gainers.

The NSE cash turnover on Friday stood at R17,243.50 crore, while the turnover in the F&O segment stood at R3.12 lakh crore.