A girl lights a lamp during Muhurat trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Tuesday. (Fotocorp)

Mumbai, Oct. 28: Stocks spiralled up in a short and sweet trading session that marked the start of Samvat 2065, dispelling — at least momentarily — the gloom and all the depressing talk of a global recession.

The special, one-hour trading session on Diwali was the best in 10 years: the sensex leapt almost 6 per cent to surge past 9000, bringing a sliver of excitement to a market that has slumped 60 per cent since the heady highs of January when the index scaled 21000.

Market circles attributed the surge to a feel-good headwind that blew in from Asia and Europe. Bargain hunting helped the Hang Seng index vault 14.4 per cent while the Nikkei gained 6.4 per cent.

Stocks gained in London and Germany even as the Dow Jones made a positive start. Investors are expecting major economies to cut rates, starting with the US on Wednesday and Europe and Britain to follow next week.

The sensex opened strong at 8957.38 and the momentum was maintained throughout the special session. It hit a high of 9056.97 before floating gently down to 9008.08, a net gain of 498.52 points or 5.86 per cent.

Similarly, the wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty rose by 160.40 points to 2684.60, after hitting a day’s high of 2695.95.

“Everyone buys during a Muhurat session,” said Gaurav Dua, head of research at Sharekhan, reflecting the significance that the broking community attaches to the event. Traditionally, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) do not participate in these special sessions.

A positive feature of the session was the resurgence in battered sectors like real estate, capital goods and metals.

But the brief euphoria could not mask the underlying apprehension in the market: once the vermilion marks brokers sported today are wiped clean, the furrows will show.

Jaysinh Kothari, director at Eastern Equities, punched a few buy orders at his trading terminal and then said these were just token trades to mark the occasion. “Last year, the mood was euphoric. This year, it’s gloom and doom; this is a gift to us from America. The markets will take time to settle down and it will go up only after the Union budget next year,” he said.

Kothari said he had bought shares in Reliance Industries which, he felt, was the safest bet on a day of tokenism.

Ved Prakash Chaturvedi, the managing director of Tata Mutual Fund, was also subdued. Admitting that the overall mood was very “despondent”, he said he couldn’t remember any Diwali in the past 20 years where the market had been as sombre.

Chaturvedi said the stock markets could stay in the positive territory in the short term, but selling was not likely to abate.

He said the big worry was that some hedge funds were facing huge redemption pressures, prompting them to dump stocks. “We must create some fund that will absorb the selling and boost sentiment.”

FIIs have notched up net sales of Rs 97,240 crore since January and there is no other group of investors that can fill that breach.