Sensex’s best week in years: What the numbers show, what commentators disagree on

What the numbers show: the Sensex closed at 81,028.02 and the Nifty at 25,030.35 on Friday.

What drove it: foreign buying and strong bank shares, according to reports.

What did not rise: the Nifty Midcap 100 and Smallcap 100 ended lower.

Where outlets differ: whether Friday was the sixth or the seventh straight session of gains.

What to check: commentators’ figures sometimes differ from closing data.

The previous closes were 79,310.01 for the Sensex and 24,536.60 for the Nifty, according to the same report.

Friday was Dhanteras, the first day of the Diwali festival period, and ETV Bharat’s headline said the day poured money into the stock market.

On Thursday, the Sensex had risen 2,008.61 points, or 2.60%, to 79,310.01, and the Nifty had gained 576 points, or 2.40%, to 24,536.60, according to ETV Bharat.

ETV Bharat says the Sensex gained 6,063.98 points, or 8.27%, over the six sessions of the winning run, and the Nifty gained 1,837.75 points, or 8%.

Business Standard’s closing headline called it a seventh straight day of gains, while ETV Bharat’s own figures describe a run of six sessions, so the count of the winning streak differs between outlets.

Other reports put the weekly gains at about 8.8% for the Sensex and 8.6% for the Nifty, which they describe as the best week in about six years, according to search summaries of Business Standard and CNBC-TV18 coverage.

Foreign institutional investors bought Rs 14,974.68 crore of equities on Thursday, according to exchange data cited by ETV Bharat.

Banks helped on Friday, and one summary says the Nifty Bank index rose 1,312 points to 59,086.

Broader markets were weaker than the benchmarks: ETV Bharat says the Nifty Midcap 100 fell 0.54% and the Nifty Smallcap 100 fell 0.87%.

In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi fell 6.02% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 5.96%, and the Shanghai and Hang Seng indices each ended more than 1% lower, according to ETV Bharat.

Bombay Stock Exchange building, Mumbai (file image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0