Weekly Market Insights: 16th October 2021

In another stellar week in markets, all major large, mid and small cap indices touched lifetime highs with the Sensex touching 61,000 and Nifty trading at 18,300

Markets are deriving positive signals from various factors. The spillover effect from the accomodative monetary policy, favourable inflation numbers and earnings recovery  across various sectors are all contributing factors.

Post pandemic pent-up demand recovery with addition of festive season demand are key factors expected to drive Q3 earnings across many sectors.

Another interesting data point to note is the continued outperformance of Indian indices over larger global indices like US, China, in the past few months.

The rally was broad-based across sectors and was led by auto and banks mainly. Auto, which has been a laggard for a considerable amount of time, saw a significant rise in the week thanks to positive demand rise seen in September sales numbers. The index also saw considerable gains from Tata Motors, which surged over 20% in the week upon announcement of a Rs 7,500 crore fund raise for its EV arm.

Mutual Fund Industry Highlights

Retail SIP data shows strong investor confidence

Retail investors are investing into mutual funds through SIPs like never before. The first half of FY 2022 has set new records both in SIP account additions and contribution. SIP AUM is also at the highest level, owing to the inflow of fresh money and the ongoing rally in equity markets.

An analysis of AMFI data shows that a total of 1.26 crore SIP accounts were registered in just the first six of months of FY 2022 (April to September), which is a notch higher than the total registrations in the whole of FY 2021 (1.25 crore).

NFO's currently open

• NJ Balanced Advantage Fund
• ICICI Prudential Smallcap Index Fund