Top Gainers & Losers
Nifty’s breadth was almost evenly split, with 26 stocks closing in the green while 24 others slipping in the red. The top gainers were Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, Eicher Motors, Bharat Electronics (BEL), Shriram Finance and Max Healthcare Institute, while the top losers were Trent, Coal India, Eternal, Tata Consumer Products and HDFC Bank.
HDFC Bank was the biggest laggard by virtue of its weight in both key indices.
Sectorally, financials and consumer stocks bore the brunt of investors’ ire, though pharma, auto and PSU banks capped the decline.
Expert View
Commenting on the day’s action, Rupak De, Senior Technical Analyst at LKP Securities, attributed the lacklustre trade to the index remaining confined within a narrow range before closing flat.
“On the daily chart, the index has been consistently failing to reclaim the 21-EMA, exhibiting an overall lack of strength. The RSI is in a bearish crossover, indicating weakening momentum. The sentiment is likely to remain weak in the near term, with a possibility of falling towards 25,300. On the higher end, resistance is placed at 25,550–25,600,” De said.
Global markets
Asian markets mostly traded weak with the Japanese Nikkei 225 the only exception. It ended 0.3% up. China’s Shanghai Composite settled flat while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index and Singapore’s FTSE Straits Times Index fell up to 0.9%.In contrast, European frontline indices were largely trading with a positive bias. French CAC 40 was the top gainer at 0.7% around 11:12 a.m. CEST (3:57 PM India time). UK’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX, and Stoxx 600 were up by up to 0.15%. IBEX 35 was an outlier, declining 0.4% around this time.
Currency Watch
The Indian rupee closed marginally stronger on Thursday, comforted by strength in regional currencies, while elevated demand to buy dollars at the daily reference rate kept gains in check. The rupee closed at 90.9050 per U.S. dollar, up slightly from its close at 90.9475 in the previous session.
Dollar demand at the reference rate, elevated due to maturity of contracts in the non-deliverable forwards market, was met with decent selling interest from interbank participants, Reuters reported, quoting a trader at a state-run bank said. The market could be positioning for some anticipated inflows while taking comfort in the central bank’s presence around the 91 per dollar mark, the trader said.
Crude Impact
Crude traded sharply lower on Thursday amid reports of a much larger-than-expected U.S. crude stock build-up that outweighed the threat to oil supply from potential military conflict between the U.S. and Iran, Reuters reported.
The US WTI oil contracts were trading at $64.55, down by $0.87 or 1.33%, while Brent oil futures were hovering near $69.89, lower by $0.96 or 1.35%.
Higher crude oil prices do not augur well for the equity markets, fuelling inflation fears.