Investors wealthier by Rs 2 lakh crore on Diwali as Dalal Street enters Samvat 2079

Nearly all of the Nifty50's constituents finished the Muhurat trading day higher. ICICI Bank, Nestle, SBI, Larsen & Toubro, the HDFC twins, UPL, Grasim, Tata Consumer and JSW Steel — ending with gains of between 1.4 percent and 2.9 percent — were the top gainers.

ICICI Bank, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Infosys and L&T were the biggest boosts for both main indices.

Hindustan Unilever (down three percent), Kotak Mahindra Bank (down 0.2 percent) and HDFC Life (down 0.1 percent) were the only laggards in the 50-scrip pack.

Barring the Nifty FMCG, which edged 0.1 percent lower, all of the sectoral indices on NSE finished the day in the green.

Market veteran Ramesh Damani believes the market will scale new peaks over the next few quarters. "For retail investors, the best time to invest was yesterday and the second best time to invest is today," he told CNBC-TV18.

Overall market breadth was sharply in favour of the bulls, as 2,662 stocks rose and 744 fell on BSE.

Wall Street indices were a mixed bag in early hours on Monday, as nascent hopes of slowing rate hikes in the US were dashed by a slide in the tech stocks. The S&P 500 was down 0.1 percent at the last count and the Nasdaq Composite down 1.2 percent, though the Dow Jones was up half a percent.

European shares rose after Rishi Sunak won the race to become the next prime minister of the UK, giving investors a greater sense of confidence in the robustness of Britain's finances. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index rose two percent.