Stocks rebound sharply to reclaim Thursday's losses

STOCKS REBOUNDED SHARPLY on Friday, logging their biggest single-day gains since February 15, propelled by some buying in banking counters and a sharp rally in index heavyweight Reliance Industries. The Sensex rallied to over 5400 levels while the boarder nifty 50 reclaimed the 16,000 shrugging off Thursday's slump in the US markets, the sentiment tracked the positivetive cues from Asian peers after the Chinese central bank cut five-year rates by 15 basis points (bps).With Friday's rally, both domestic b benchmarks man aged to snap their 5-week losing streak and ended the week higher by nearly 3% each; the week was the best since March 20.After gaining as much as 1,604 points intra-day, the lernSensex settled higher by 1,534.16 points, or 2.9%, at 34,326 54,326.39, and the broader nifty 50 advanced 456.75 points, or 2.9%, to 16,266.15. Reliance Industries, HDFC hile Bank, and ICICI Bank were the intop o contributors to the Sen- sex's up move. The Reliance Industries stock surged as much as 5.8%, marking its best single-day gain in six months Siddhartha Khemka, head of retail research, Motional Oswal Financial Services, believes the rate action in China with the five-year loan prime rate being cut by 15 basis points to 4.45% to stimulate economic activity,helped the sentiment. The positive commentary from the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, in her address at the 7thannual meeting of New Development Bank (NDB), also lifted the sentiment Market watchers indicated there could have been a fair bit of short covering at the end of the week. Moreover, it is possible, they said, there could be some short positions remaining, perhaps of Foreign Portfolio invest.