A sharp drop in daily Covid-19 cases perked up bulls on Dalal Street on Monday as investors hoped for a sooner-than-expected taper down of the second wave. However, even though the new case count, at over 366,000 and 3,754 deaths, were off a little from recent peak, it came on the back of 1.47 million tests for Covid-19 which were this month's lowest yet.
Nonetheless, domestic equity indices started gap-up and remained parked near the day's high level for the better part of the day. Among the frontline indices, the BSE barometer of 30-shares hit an intra-day high of 49,617 before ending the session at 49,502 levels, up 296 points or 0.6 per cent. About seven of the 30 constituents ended the day in the red including UltraTech Cement, Infosys, HCL Tech, Reliance Industries, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finserv, and Axis Bank. The stocks declined up to 1.3 per cent.