By Malvika Gurung
Investing.com -- The domestic market indices made a positive opening to the new week on Monday, defying weak cues from Asian peers, led by gains from market heavyweights including Titan, L&T (NS:LART) and Bajaj twins.
The benchmark index Nifty50 hit an intraday high of 18,881.45 on Monday, only 6.15 points away from hitting its all-time high of 18887.6 points six months back, and has hit the highest level in the calendar year 2023.
At 10:49 am, headlines Nifty50 dipped 0.2% to 18,788.15 levels and Sensex lost 110.8 points or 0.17%. The market fear barometer India VIX jumped 4.8% to 11.36 levels in the intraday trade.
Sectoral indices listed under the Nifty umbrella traded mixed with Nifty PSU Bank leading the gains, surging 1.1% and the Nifty Healthcare index followed.
On the other hand, the Nifty Private Bank index declined the most and Nifty Bank slashed 0.55% at the time of writing.
In a note provided to Investing.com, Dr V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, pointed out two significant trends going on in the market - one being that the ongoing rally is broad-based with the participation of most sectors except large-cap IT.
The other one is that mid and small caps are outperforming large caps. Vijayakumar expects this trend to continue in the near term.
Private banking stocks including Kotak Mahindra Bank (NS:KTKM), Axis Bank (NS:AXBK) and ICICI Bank (NS:ICBK) led the losses on Nifty, along with Adani Enterprises (NS:ADEL) and Adani Ports (NS:APSE).