New Delhi, Jun 13 (IANS): Indian equity benchmarks closed in the green on Thursday following inflation decreases in India and the US. At closing, Sensex was at 76,810, up by 204 points or 0.27 per cent, and Nifty was up by 75 points or 0.33 per cent, at 23,398.

Buying has been seen in Nifty since the last few trading sessions. In early trade, the NSE benchmark hit an all-time high of 23,481, after breaching an earlier high of 23,441.

There has been a bullish trend in the Indian stock market for the past year. Nifty surged 5.88 per cent in the previous month, 11.84 per cent in the last six months, 7.65 per cent since the beginning of this year and nearly 25 per cent in the previous year.

The reasons behind the rally in Nifty are high GDP growth, stable government in the country, and increased corporate earnings.

There is a bullish trend in small and medium stocks also. The Nifty Midcap 100 index closed 426 points or 0.79 per cent higher at 54,652 points and the Nifty Smallcap 100 index closed 119 points or 0.67 per cent higher at 17,908 points.

Among sectoral indices, Auto, IT, fin service, pharma, realty, infra, and PSE were major gainers and FMCG, realty, and infra were major laggards.

M&M, Titan, L&T, IndusInd Bank, Tech Mahindra, TCS, UltraTech Cement, and Wipro were the top gainers. HUL, ICICI Bank, Power Grid, and Axis Bank were the top losers.

"The domestic equity benchmark traded with a modest gain, with domestic CPI data indicating that inflation is on a slow track of decline. A similar trend is reported in the US CPI, which brought down the market expectation from two rate cuts in CY24 to one, which is having a mixed effect on the global markets," market experts said.