Nifty forms bullish candle on weekly charts

The Indian benchmark indices kicked off the new year 2025 with moderate gains, despite weaker economic data. On the first day of the new year, the rally was driven by select heavyweights such as Asian Paints, HDFC Bank, L&T, Mahindra & Mahindra and Maruti. Positive auto sales numbers for the month of December along with hopes of a favourable Union Budget, boosted market sentiment.

- Motilal Oswal Team

The strong start has resulted in Sensex reaching the 80,000 market and the Nifty closing above the 24,000 psychological level.

On the last trading day of the week, we saw benchmark indices dropping nearly 1% each due to profit booking after a strong rally over the previous two trading days. The market sentiment was further weakened by the depreciating rupee, weak PMI data hitting 1-year low and crude oil prices reaching 3-month high levels.

Interestingly, the decline in global markets impacted the dollar index rising to above 109 levels, which is at 26-month high on account of expectation that the US Fed would delay interest rate cut following a strong US jobless claims data which indicates that the economy is doing extremely fine.