Indian share markets continued their momentum and ended their day on a strong note today.

Benchmark indices rallied for the third consecutive day in a row today and logged yet another record-breaking session as the highest-ever quarterly net profit by India's largest state-owned bank State Bank of India sparked a rally in other financial stocks.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 546 points (up 1%).

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty closed higher by 128 points (up 0.8%).

HDFC and Kotak Mahindra Bank were among the top gainers today.

Grasim and Titan, on the other hand, were among the top losers today.

The SGX Nifty was trading at 16,268, up by 103 points, at the time of writing.

Both, the BSE Mid Cap index and the BSE Small Cap index ended the day down by 1.1%.

On the sectoral front, gains were largely seen in the banking sector, finance sector, and energy sector.

Telecom and realty stocks, on the other hand, witnessed selling pressure.

Shares of Bajaj Finance and ICICI Bank hit their respective 52-week highs today.

US stock futures are trading on a negative note today with the Dow Futures trading down by 36 points.

The rupee is trading at 74.18 against the US$.

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX are trading up by 0.7% at Rs 48,147 per 10 grams.

Here are 5 Factors That Powered the Rally

Positive Global Cues: Asian share markets advanced to one-week highs, led largely by strong US corporate earnings.

Both, the Hang Seng and the Shanghai Composite ended the day up by 0.9%.

The Nikkei ended down by 0.2% in today's session.

In US stock markets, investors have been upbeat that the economic expansion will boost corporate profits and enable stocks to keep rising, albeit at a slower pace.

A record number of companies have been beating analysts' estimates for earnings this season, according to Deutsche Bank.

Macro Data Upbeat: Progressive economic data indicates a strong rebound from the impact of the second wave.

All major domestic data like PMI index, GST collection, corporate earnings, and export data favor a strong recovery.

FII Buying: Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have turned buyers now. Net-net, they were buyers of domestic stocks to the tune of Rs 21.2 bn, data available with NSE suggested.

Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were sellers to the tune of Rs 3 bn.

Better Earnings: The current market rally was supported by the better earning from India Inc.

FMCG giant Dabur and India's biggest lender State Bank of India posted healthy numbers for the quarter ended 30 June 2021.

Despite lockdowns in the first quarter of the current financial year 2022, corporate earnings have largely been able to meet market expectations.

Sectoral Performance: The banking and finance sectors witnessed huge buying interest today. The banking sector ended the day up by 2.6% today, while the finance sector ended its day higher by 2.1%.

SBI Reports Highest-Ever Quarterly Net Profit

In news from the banking sector, the State Bank of India was among the top buzzing stocks today.

State Bank of India (SBI) today reported a 55.2% year-on-year (YoY) increase in standalone net profit at Rs 65 bn for the April-June quarter, meeting street expectations.

The net profit in the year-ago period was Rs 41.9 bn.

Analysts, on average, projected profit after tax (PAT) to rise anywhere between 33-63%, up to Rs 68.4 bn.

Sequentially, the lender's profit increased just 0.8% from Rs 64.5 bn clocked in the March quarter of fiscal 2021.

On the revenue front, the state-owned lender reported lower-than-expected net interest income (NII) of Rs 276.4 bn, up 3.7% YoY from Rs 266.4 bn earned in the same quarter a year ago.

On a quarterly basis, the income rose 2.1% from Rs 270.7 bn reported in the fourth quarter of the year 2021.

The street had pegged up to a 12% YoY rise in NII on the back of around 8-9% growth in, both, loans and deposits.

SBI's loan book expansion negatively surprised the street as it grew 5.8% YoY to Rs 25.2 tn from Rs 23.9 tn in the same period last year.

The deposits, meanwhile, expanded 8.8% YoY to Rs 37.2 tn from Rs 34.2 tn.

However, the country's largest state-owned bank's asset quality worsened sequentially amid the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Its gross non-performing asset (GNPA) ratio stood at 5.3% at the end of the June quarter, compared to 5% at the end of March 2021 quarter.

State Bank of India's share price ended the day up by 2.4% on the BSE.

Speaking of public sector undertakings (PSU), have a look at the chart below which shows the performance of the BSE PSU index compared to BSE Sensex over the past few years.

As can be seen from the chart above, over the last decade, Rs 100 invested in the BSE-PSU index would have eroded to Rs 80, compared to almost 3x gains for the Sensex.

Moving on to news from the IPO space...

Devyani International IPO Fully Subscribed Within 3 Hours

The Rs 18.4 bn initial public offering (IPO) by Devyani International was fully subscribed in just over three hours of the bidding process.

The IPO is being sold in the Rs 86-90 price band. Last heard the unlisted stock was commanding a grey market premium of Rs 63-65.

The public issue of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Costa Coffee operator Devyani international has been subscribed 2.1 times on 4 August 2021, the first day of bidding.

The offer has received bids for 236.4 m equity shares against the IPO size of 112.5 m equity shares, the subscription data available on exchanges showed.

Its IPO size has been reduced to 112.5 m equity shares from 204.2 m equity shares after the company raised Rs 8.2 bn from anchor investors on August 3.

The retail investors remained at the forefront as their reserved portion was subscribed 9.56 times and that of employees 59%.

The portion set aside for non-institutional investors has seen a subscription of 36% and qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) have put in bids for 50% of their reserved portion.

How the IPO sails through remains to be seen. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more updates from this space.