Soaring High! 132 BSE500 stocks hit 52-week highs in May. Do you own any?

Some of the marquee names in the list include IndusInd Bank, Indian Oil Corp, Persistent Systems, Bharti Airtel, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, ITC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndiGo, Titan, Ultratech, DLF, Varun Beverages, Delta Corp, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors, HPCL.

Nifty touched an all-time high of 18,758 in November, but drifted downwards from those levels for the first three months of 2023, mainly on account of several macro challenges.

However, the trend reversed in April and further extending the rally, the S&P BSE Sensex has gained about 2% in May, helped by consistent FII buying despite mixed global cues.

FIIs have been returning to the Indian equity market with positive flows seen in the last two months. They pumped in about Rs 37,900 crore in May, nearly triple the investments from the previous month.

The return of foreign investors is being led by the country’s supportive valuations post the correction seen in Feb and March, robust economic outlook with improving high-frequency indicators, and in-line March quarter results.

From the previous high, Nifty is currently down by only 1% while mid- and small-caps are up by 5% and 3%, respectively.In May, the broad-based recovery continued across the sectors with which all sectoral indices closed on a positive note, except the one for the PSU banks.

The biggest recovery was seen in auto, FMCG, and the realty index while the moderate performance was seen in commodities and metals space.

According to Axis Securities, about 33% of the stocks were trading above the 200-day moving average in March, indicating the market was in the oversold zone. However, the market has witnessed a sharp recovery since and now 63% of the stocks are trading above 200 DMA, indicating it to be out of the oversold zone.

The brokerage believes the macro economic scenario will continue to drive the market direction moving forward and rural and domestic focus themes would gain momentum from here onwards.

“On account of normal monsoon expectations, pickup in the economic activities, sequential improvement in the services PMI, and the likelihood of higher remittances are likely to translate into rural recovery in the upcoming months,” it said.