Benchmark Indices Under Pressure Ahead Of F&O Expiry Today

The benchmark indices witnessed marginal gains in the early morning trade. However the markets dipped down and erased off early gains ahead of F&O expiry. The BSE Sensex was trading down by 97 points at 26646 and the NSE Nifty was down by 29 points at 7972. The BSE mid-cap and small-cap indices were also seen trading in a negative zone. The BSE mid-cap index was trading down by 1.22% and the small-cap index was seen trading down by 1.70%. The overall market breadth on BSE was negative as 416 shares advanced and 1500 shares declined. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Wednesday cancelled all 214 coal block allocations and just spared four which are run by the central government. As per the provisional stock exchange data on Wednesday, the foreign portfolio investors were net sellers of Rs 794 crore.

Tracking the momentum of the sectoral indices, BSE IT was the top gainer and was up by 1.05%. The gainers in today's trade included, Coal India which was up by 1.55% after the Supreme Court verdict. The other gainers included GAIL, Cipla, and Dr. Reddy which were up by 1.89%, 1.28% and 1.20% respectively. However, Jindal Steel and Power was seen trading in negative zone after the Supreme Court verdict. It has negatively impacted the company, the stock was seen trading down by nearly 5% in today's trade. PNB, Bank of Baroda lost around 2% in the trade as the apex court verdict over the coal block allocation has made the banking sector jittery.

Further, a firming trend was seen in the Asian markets. All the indices were seen trading in the positive zone. Japan's Nikkei was up by 1.07%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was marginally up by 0.01% and China's Shanghai was up by 0.62% in today's trade.