Choppy Day Ends In Red

The Indian markets traded sideways till mid-session and then extended their morning losses as banking stocks like ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda and SBIN made new intraday lows. Nifty closed the day down by 19 points at 6191 and Sensex slid 64 points to 20787. Both indices saw losses between 0.31%-0.32%.

The advance-decline ratio on the NSE turned into the positive by day’s end. 1645 shares closed in green and 1213 shares were in red.

Top Nifty Gainers: ONGC gained 1.8% in today’s trades, followed by Sun Pharma, Jindal Steel, Tata Motors and Ranbaxy Labs.

Top Nifty Losers: Tata Power closed the day lower by 2.6%. Among the other stocks in negatives were ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, SBIN and Hero MotoCorp.

Among the sectoral indices, Bankex saw the sharpest losses, down by 143 points. IT dipped 45 points and Oil & Gas has lost 17 points today. Mid-Caps and Small-Caps both saw gains of around 50 points. Auto, Healthcare and FMCG also closed on a positive note. 

The Asian market also closed in the red. Nikkei ended 382 points down and Hang Seng was 133 points lower. Taiwan Weighted and Shanghai Composite were also in negatives.

Buzzer:  ONGC gained more than 1.5% on the bourses today and closed above the technical level of Rs 275. If the stock remains above this level, it may touch the Rs 300 mark in the next few sessions.

For the past couple of days, Nifty Futures has been taking support at the 6200 level. If the index sustains below this level in tomorrow’s session, it may see more pain.