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Informist, Friday, Jul. 31, 2026

 

By Gopika Balasubramanium

 

MUMBAI – A significant fall in Brent crude oil price following US President Donald Trump's comments that peace talks with Iran would take place Monday afternoon resulted in the domestic equity indices ending higher, starting the week on an optimistic note. Analysts and fund managers see the buying interest stemming from the slightly better-than-expected earnings even though risks of a rise in input costs due to the war in West Asia persist. Across sectors, Indian companies have raised prices to tackle the increase in expenses during the September quarter, protecting their margins.

 

Separately, the stock exchanges began implementing the new closing auction session for the equity cash segment, which is limited to stocks in which futures and options trading is permitted. This changes how cash market orders are handled and executed and how closing prices are determined for these shares. As per the new rules, the continuous trading session ends at 1515 IST for these selected stocks and the closing auction session ends between 1528 IST and 1530 IST.

 

This differs from the earlier method of discovering the closing price through a volume-weighted average of trades executed during the last 30 minutes of the continuous trading session. The objective of the closing auction session, according to the Securities and Exchange Board of India, is to provide mutual funds, particularly index funds and index exchange-traded funds, a "more stable and less volatile closing price". The framework for orders and trades in the rest of the listed stocks in the equity cash segment remains unchanged and their trading session continues as usual until 1530 IST.

 

After the closing auction, the Nifty 50 ended at 24774.30 points, up 1.6% from Friday. The closing level of the index was up sharply from 24573.35 points at 1515 IST when the continuous trading in F&O stocks stopped. The BSE Sensex ended at 78639.03, up 544.39 points or 0.7%. The broader market indices also ended sharply higher, rising 1.0-1.4%. The domestic market's fear gauge, the India VIX, ended 1.5% higher at 11.9250. Barring, the index gauging media stocks, all other sectoral indices closed higher. The Nifty IT was the top performer, rising over 3% to end at 31715.25 points.

 

Information technology stocks such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL Technologies ended 2-5% higher. This came after the sharp fall Friday when traders chose to sell Indian IT stocks after Microsoft's upbeat earnings restored hope in the artificial intelligence trade, buying semiconductor companies elsewhere in Asia. "...people have cut down their positions from there (AI) and started looking at Indian IT companies (again)," a fund manager at a trust said. This is mainly because domestic IT companies have huge cash flows and their balance sheets have the might to do acquisitions and scale up their AI-related operations. Mid-cap stock LTM ended 7.5% higher.

 

Traders bought shares of Grasim Industries, which ended over 5% higher, the top performer in the Nifty 50. The stock had fallen for the past three trading sessions. InterGlobe Aviation ended over 4% higher after crude oil price eased to around $84 a barrel. Only shares of six large-cap companies closed lower. Apollo Hospitals Enterprises was the worst-hit, ending 1.5% down.

 

The talk of the market on the day, however, was Nifty 500 stock Zee Entertainment Enterprises. SEBI barred the company from the securities market for two months. Its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Punit Goenka and Chairman Emeritus Subhash Chandra have been banned for a full year. This was on account of them pledging the company's land in Hyderabad without authorisation to secure loans for promoter-linked Essel Group entities. The stock fell over 14% to end at INR 98.14.

 

"There is a need for further clarity to emerge on the matter (SEBI order) and the developments will need to be monitored," JM Financial said in its report on the media and entertainment company. The brokerage maintained its "reduce" stance on the stock with an unchanged target price of INR 107.

 

Urban Co. ended 13% higher and was the top gainer in the Nifty 500. This was despite the company posting a loss for the fourth quarter in a row on account of a rise in employee expenses, purchases of stock-in-trade, and a near doubling of other expenses. Balrampur Chini Mills and Pine Labs also closed 9-10% higher.

 

* Of the Nifty 50 stocks, 44 rose, 6 fell

* Of the Sensex stocks, 18 rose, 9 fell

* On the NSE, 2,358 stocks rose, 1,027 fell, and 120 were unchanged

* On the BSE, 2,837 stocks rose, 1,552 fell, and 211 were unchanged
* Nifty IT: up 3.3%; Nifty Private Bank: up 1.9%; Nifty Media: down 3.1%

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BSE                                            NSE

Sensex: 78639.03, up 544.49 points or 0.7%     Nifty 50: 24774.30, up 390.70 points, or 1.6%

 

S&P BSE Sensitive Index	Nifty 50
Lifetime High: 86159.02 (Dec. 1, 2025)	: Lifetime High: 26373.20 (Jan. 5, 2026)
Record Close High: 85836.12 (Sept. 26, 2024)	: Record Close High: 26328.55 (Jan. 2, 2026)
2026 1st day close: 85188.60 (Jan. 1)	: 2026 1st day close: 26146.55 (Jan. 1)
2026 Closing High: 85762.01 (Jan. 2)	: 2026 Closing High: 26328.55 (Jan. 2)
2026 Closing Low: 71947.55 (Mar. 30)	: 2026 Closing Low: 22331.40 (Mar. 30)
2026 High (intraday): 85883.50 (Jan. 5)	: 2026 High (intraday): 26373.20 (Jan. 5)
2026 Low (intraday): 71545.81 (Apr. 1)	: 2026 Low (intraday): 22182.55 (Apr.2)
2025 1st day close: 78507.41 (Jan. 1)	: 2025 1st day close: 23742.90 (Jan. 1)
2025 Closing High: 85720.38 (Nov. 27)	: 2025 Closing High: 26215.55 (Nov. 27)
2025 Closing Low: 72989.93 (Mar. 4)	: 2025 Closing Low: 22082.65 (Mar. 4)
2025 High (intraday): 86159.02 (Dec. 1)	: 2025 High (intraday): 26325.80 (Dec.1)
2025 Low (intraday): 71425.01 (Apr. 7)	: 2025 Low (intraday): 21743.65 (Apr. 7)
2024 1st day close: 72271.94 (Jan. 1)	: 2024 1st day close: 21741.90 (Jan. 1)
2024 Closing High: 85836.12 (Sept. 26)	: 2024 Closing High: 26216.05 (Sept. 26)
2024 Closing Low: 70370.55 (Jan. 23)	: 2024 Closing Low: 21238.80 (Jan. 23)
2024 High (intraday): 85978.25 (Sep. 27)	: 2024 High (intraday): 26277.35 (Sept. 27)
2024 Low (intraday): 70001.60 (Jan. 24)	: 2024 Low (intraday): 21137.20 (Jan. 24)
2023 1st day close: 61167.79 (Jan. 2)	: 2023 1st day close: 18197.45 (Jan. 2)
2023 Closing High: 72410.38 (Dec. 28)	: 2023 Closing High: 21778.70 (Dec. 28)
2023 Closing Low: 59288.35 (Feb. 27)	: 2023 Closing Low: 17311.80 (Oct. 17)
2023 High (intraday): 72484.34 (Dec. 28)	: 2023 High (intraday): 21801.45 (Dec. 28)
2023 Low (intraday): 58699.20 (Jan. 30)	: 2023 Low (intraday): 17098.55 (Jan. 17)
2022 1st day close: 59183.22 (Jan. 3)	: 2022 1st day close: 17625.70 (Jan. 3)
2022 Closing High: 63284.19 (Dec. 1)	: 2022 Closing High: 18812.50 (Dec. 1)
2022 Closing Low: 51360.42 (Jun. 17)	: 2022 Closing Low: 15293.50 (Jun. 17)
2022 High (intraday): 63583.07 (Dec. 1)	: 2022 High (intraday): 18887.60 (Dec. 1)
2022 Low (intraday): 50921.22 (Jun. 17)	: 2022 Low (intraday): 15183.40 (Jun. 17)
2021 Closing High: 61305.95 (Oct. 14)	: 2021 Closing High: 18338.55 (Oct. 14)
2021 Closing Low: 46285.77 (Jan. 29)	: 2021 Closing Low: 13634.60 (Jan. 29)
2021 High (intraday): 61353.25 (Oct. 14)	: 2021 High (intraday): 18350.75 (Oct. 14)
2021 Low (intraday): 46160.46 (Jan. 29)	: 2021 Low (intraday): 13596.75 (Jan. 29)
2020 Closing High: 47751.33 (Dec. 31)	: 2020 Closing High: 13981.95 (Dec. 30)
2020 Closing Low: 25981.24 (Mar. 23)	: 2020 Closing Low: 7610.25 (Mar. 23)
2020 High (intraday): 47896.97 (Dec. 31)	: 2020 High (intraday): 14024.85 (Dec. 31)
2020 Low (intraday): 25638.90 (Mar. 24)	: 2020 Low (intraday): 7511.10 (Mar. 24)
2019 High (intraday): 41809.96 (Dec. 20)	: 2019 High (intraday): 12293.90 (Dec. 20)
2019 Low (intraday): 35287.16 (Feb. 19)	: 2019 Low (intraday): 10583.65 (Jan. 29)
2018 High (intraday): 38938.91(Aug. 28))	: 2018 High(intraday): 11760.20 (Aug. 28)
2018 Low (intraday): 32483.8 (Mar. 23)	: 2018 Low (intraday): 9951.9 (Mar. 23)
2017 High (intraday): 34005.37 (Dec. 26)	: 2017 High(intraday): 10515.10 (Dec. 26)

 

End

 

US$1 = INR 95.33

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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