Today’s Market Summarised
Nifty consolidated over the whole day with a slight bearish bias, right in time for the weekly expiry. The volatility expected on ever Thursday was not experienced, mostly due to stock specific movements which cancelled out each other’s movements. After opening the day at a fresh all-time high 13,216 but fell right after it found it hard to sustain. The index fell slowly over the course of the day, but very slowly. The index consolidated and closed at 13,133.90, up 20 points or 0.15%.
Bank Nifty opened the day at 29,728.3 and went down along with Nifty. The index of banks fell consistently from there. But soon, PSU Banks started giving unbelievable movements which pushed up the index to fresh day-highs. But the index of all major banks found it hard to sustain and fell beautifully, especially after HDFC Bank started falling. Bank Nifty closed the day at 29,448, down 14 points or 0.05%, after falling beautifully.
Nifty PSU Banks was clearly the best performing sector of the day, with metals and media right behind. Markets still stayed flat even with few industries outperforming, like above.
World markets had a surprisingly tame day, with more or less every markets closing flat.
News Picks
Maruti Suzuki closed as the day’s top gainer after the management’s commentary moved the stock up. Executive Director Shashank Srivatsava said that the companies retail sales are up 70% YoY, and that they expect demand to continue even after the festive season got done. The stock went up 7.39% to close at Rs 7,739.
ONGC continued its Bull Run, and call closed among the Top Gainers for the day. The company has been gaining for the last few days, after the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board notified regulations for unified gas transmission tariff structures. ONGC gained 4.54% while GAIL went up more than 1.5%.
Thermal Power Giant NTPC (up 3.96%) and Coal India(up 2.58%) gained space in the top-gainers list today. Yesterday, Coal India reported a 3.3% increase in production, along with increasing sales and coal off-takes.
HDFC Bank closed as the top-losing stock of the day, down more than 2%. This fall came after the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) ordered the bank to stop their new digital banking efforts named ‘Digital 2.0’, due to recurring failures. This fall actually kept Bank Nifty and hence Nifty down.
Funnily enough, shares of SBI Cards jumped more than 5% after the above RBI order was found to include stoppage of issuance of new Credit Cards by HDFC Bank.
Tata Chemicals share rose 6% after Promoter Tata Sons bought additional 18 lakh shares of the company yesterday. Promoters increasing stake always gives confidence to other investors in the company.
Bank of Baroda(up 7.76%), Punjab National Bank(up 5.45%) and SBI(up 3.79%) together could not stop Bank Nifty from closing in red. This shows how big a weightage HDFC Bank has in the index, despite being down only 2%.
Markets Ahead
Even with Nifty opening above 13,200, I was personally confident that it would fall. HDFC Bank’s fall surely helped my analysis, along with Reliance staying below the 2,000 mark. While HDFC Bank’s fall is only temporary, Reliance is looking very weak below 2,000. Let us wait to see if we can catch a rebound in these stocks.
The H1-B visa ruling, although said to help Indians working abroad, will increase costs for the IT majors as they would slow down Indian hiring. We could see TCS among the top-losers today, as well. Every coin definitely has two sides, right?
Hope you will all tune in to The Stock Market Show tonight. Keep watching this space for more.
