Nifty crosses 11,000, Sensex breaches 36,000 on IMF cheer

The NSE Nifty on Tuesday sailed past the 11,000 mark, while the BSE Sensex breached the 36,000 level for the first time after an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report showed India was set to regain the title as the world`s fastest growing major economy in 2018-19.

IMF on Monday revised up its forecast for world economic growth and said that it expected a strong Indian economy to offset decelerating growth in China. 

Gains in global markets after US lawmakers passed a short-term measure to fund the federal government through Feb 8, ending a three-day government shutdown, also boosted investor sentiment. 
MSCI`s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.9 percent to a fresh record peak while each of Wall Street`s main indexes hit record highs on Monday. 

"Earnings so far have been positive and macroeconomic factors are fuelling the market movement," said Sudhakar Pattabiraman, head of research operations at MarketSmith, which is part of financial services provider William O`Neil.

Previous concerns about the impact of the launch of a national goods and services tax (GST) or the country`s shock decision in 2016 to remove higher-currency bills from circulation were also receding, he added.

The broader Nifty was up 0.88 percent at 11,062.90 as of 0641 GMT, after rising as much as 1.1 percent to a record of 11,087.70 points. The benchmark Sensex was trading 0.79 percent higher at 36,080.43 after gaining 1 percent to a fresh peak of 36,147.75 points earlier in the session. Both indexes clocked record high levels 11 times this year.

Nifty took nearly six months to rise from 10,000 to 11,000 points, marking the fourth shortest period for the index to cover a thousand point milestone. Among stocks boosting the indexes, Infosys gained over 3 percent while Reliance Industries Ltd and State Bank of India rose 2 percent.

Metal stocks led gains on the NSE index, with Hindalco Industries Ltd and Vedanta Ltd climbing over 5 percent. The Nifty metal index gained as much as 5.1 percent. Public lenders also rose, with the Nifty PSU bank index gaining 1.9 percent.