Market Watch: Will bank stocks benefit the most if Covid cases continue to drop?

WPI inflation rises steeply to 10.49% in April
Daily Covid cases fall to sub-3 lakh level
RBI not in favour of fresh insolvency freeze
Airtel’s Q4 PAT declines 11% QoQ to Rs 759 crore
Sensex, Nifty log best single-day gains in over a month

Let us take a quick glance at what happened on the Dalal Street today.

A fall in daily Covid cases to below 3 lakh level eased concerns over lockdowns, driving the rally in domestic indices on Monday. Investors shrugged off a double-digit growth in wholesale inflation as Sensex soared nearly 850 points while Nifty climbed about 2 per cent to zip past the 14,900 mark.

Bank stocks rallied, with benchmark Nifty Bank jumping 4 per cent. Monday’s gains helped domestic investors make over Rs 3 lakh crore for the day.

The top 5 Sensex gainers were banks. IndusInd Bank surged 7 per cent, SBI 6 per cent while ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank advanced 4 per cent each. Reliance Industries, Infosys, ONGC, M&M and UltraTech Cement rose 1-2 per cent. L&T and Bharti Airtel dropped 2 per cent each. Nestle India, Sun Pharma and Power Grid declined up to 1 per cent.

In the broader market, two stocks rose for every stock that declined. Every sixth stock that traded on BSE hit the upper circuit limit.

We have Narendra Solanki of Anand Rathi Financial Services to share his views on the market. Welcome to the show sir:

1) What led to the strong show in the market today?
2) India Covid cases seemed to have peaked with the fresh daily figure clocking a number below 3 lakh-mark. Which stocks or sectors could see a strong recovery if cases continue to fall going ahead?

We also caught up with Nirav Chheda of Nirmal Bang Securities to decode the technical charts for you. Welcome to the show Mr Chheda:

1) Nifty breached the 14,900-mark today. What are the charts suggesting?
2) A 4% surge in Nifty Bank was quite surprising. Can we see more gains ahead?

Asian markets ended mixed for the day. European markets were trading lower in the first few hours of trade. US stock futures were hinting at a weak start to US equities later in the day.