Indian stocks gained on Friday, bucking an across-the-board selloff in Asian markets, helped by sliding crude oil prices, fresh foreign inflows, and light exposure to global artificial intelligence trades.
The Nifty 50 was up 0.51 per cent at 24,662.80 and the BSE Sensex was trading 0.76 per cent higher at 79,917.60, according to Reuters.
These increases come amidst declines of 8% in South Korea’s Kospi and 5% in Japan’s Nikkei, as worries over slowing AI infrastructure investment led to a sell off in technology stocks.
Foreign institutional investors purchased around 150 billion rupees ($1.6 billion) of Indian stocks on Thursday, the largest single-day net purchase of Indian stocks in nearly six years as global funds moved out of AI-associated securities.
Brent crude was below $100 a barrel, mitigating some fears of inflation and economic slowdown in India, one of the biggest consumers of imported oil.
“Higher energy prices, the AI trade, currency weakness and FII outflows until recently were the big overhang on the Indian market,” Shahzad Madon, managing director and chief executive of TCG AMC, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, he said, those pressures had been coming off for some time, while gains in the market from improving valuations and corporate earnings were also supportive.
Indian tech stocks rise 1.3% on Friday as small and mid-cap stocks fall.
