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Sensex rises as Pfizer vaccine announcement buoys investor hopes
The news of the vaccine buoyed investments as investors saw a possible exit from the market losses brought by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sensex joined rising global markets on Tuesday as news of Pfizer’s vaccine results gave hope to investors. The Sensex climbed 1.39% to 43,187.45 and Nifty rose 1%. The S&P BSE Sensex also touched a peak of 42,959.25 in the opening session. The broader Nifty50 index also recorded a fresh high of 12,557.05.
The news of the vaccine buoyed investments as investors saw a possible exit from the market losses brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their Covid-19 vaccine candidate’s effectiveness has been found to be more than 90%. Following the news, Bloomberg reported that US drugmaker Pfizer’s Indian arm Pfizer Ltd gained as much as 19.8% during the session.
According to PTI, the largest gainers are ICICI Bank followed by ONGC, HDFC, L&T, SBI, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank and Bajaj Finance. InterGlobe Aviation’s stocks rose by 5.3% and hotel operator Lemon Tree jumped more than 5%.
Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank and IndusInd Bank gained the most in the Nifty. Nifty Bank Index climbed 2.4% for a seventh consecutive session, according to Reuters. The tech sector in the Nifty IT index saw prices drop as shares of Tech Mahindra, Infosys and HCL Technologies slipped by more than 3%.
“Clarity over COVID-19 vaccine is likely to ease the concerns of the possible second wave of coronavirus in India, which essentially means that revival of economic activities should persist,” Arjun Yash Mahajan, head of Institutional Business at Reliance Securities said, according to PTI.
Investors are also closely observing the outcome of the Bihar Assembly Election 2020.
Along with India, benchmarks in Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney rose on the news of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine news.
