The Sensex and Nifty ended higher on Monday, snapping four sessions of losses, as Democrat Hillary Clinton's prospects improved in the US presidential race after federal investigators cleared her in their latest review.
The FBI today gave a clean chit to Hillary Clinton, saying it has not changed its view after a renewed probe into her use of private e-mail server as secretary of state, a development seen as a game changer for the Democratic presidential candidate.
Short-covering of bets by speculators also supported the upmove.
The broader NSE index ended 63.3 points or 0.75 per cent higher at 8,497.05, after rising as much as 1.2 per cent earlier in the day.
The benchmark BSE index closed 184.84 points or 0.68 per cent higher at 27,458.99, after gaining as much as 1.16 per cent earlier in the session.
Barring capital goods, all other BSE sectoral indices ended in the green. Among them, metal index gained the most by 1.94 per cent, healthcare 1.89 per cent, banking 1.7 per cent and realty 1.5 per cent, while capital goods index was down 0.09 per cent.
The Nifty Bank index and the Nifty Pharma index rose as much as 1.68 per cent and 3.26 per cent, respectively, rebounding after four sessions of declines.
Top five Sensex gainers were Lupin (+6.93%), State Bank of India (+4.06%), ICICII Bank (+3.36%), ITC (+3.05%) and Tata Steel (+2.1%), while the major losers were TCS (-2.18%), L&T (-1.34%), HUL (-1.09%), Tata Motors (-0.94%) and ONGC (-0.85%).
A report by Nomura said: "The government is aggressively angling to implement the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from April 1, 2017. Decisions on tax slabs, compensation to states and threshold limits have already been finalised. Still pending are 1) a classification of each good and service into specific tax brackets; 2) the passage of the three GST laws during the winter session of parliament; 3) preparation of the IT infrastructure; and 4) the training of tax officers and industry. In our view, the main risk to the April 1, 2017 deadline is whether the IT infrastructure will be ready and whether all stakeholders can be integrated smoothly. However, we are confident that the GST will be implemented sometime in 2017. The GST is a game-changing tax reform that we believe will boost growth, lower costs and buttress the government’s tax revenues."