Stock Market Today: Sensex, Nifty 50 rise for second consecutive session; investors pocket nearly Rs.3 lakh crore in a day

Stock market today: Frontline indices the Sensex and the Nifty 50 closed in the positive territory for the second consecutive session on Friday, December 22, on gains led by IT heavyweights, including Infosys, HCL Tech and Wipro, amid mixed global cues.

Domestic market sentiment has been broadly positive lately on healthy macroeconomic prints.

Also, global inflation going down globally and the US Federal Reserve saying they won't raise interest rates anymore have made investors even more positive. However, concerns over valuations have also been mounting, triggering intermittent profit-booking.

Sensex closed with a gain of 242 points, or 0.34 per cent, at 71,106.96 while the Nifty 50 ended the day 94 points, or 0.44 per cent, higher at 21,349.40 on Friday.

Shares of Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, HCL Tech, Wipro and TCS ended as the top contributors, in that order, to the gains in the Sensex index.

Mid and smallcaps outperformed the benchmark Sensex. The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices jumped 0.74 per cent and 1.04 per cent respectively.

However, for the week, both the Sensex and the Nifty 50 declined by about half a per cent while the BSE Midcap index lost almost a per cent. The BSE Smallcap index declined by about 0.2 per cent this week.

The overall market capitalisation of the firms listed on the BSE rose to nearly ₹356.8 lakh crore from nearly ₹354.1 lakh crore in the previous session, making investors richer by about ₹2.7 lakh crore in a single session.

Over 240 stocks, including IndusInd Bank, Wipro, DLF, GAIL, Hindalco, Persistent Systems, Wipro and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), hit their fresh 52-week highs in intraday trade on BSE.