Nifty closes below historic high of 10,000 as investors cautious ahead of Fed meet
Finally the market touched much awaited historic high of 10,000-mark in opening on Tuesday but failed to hold the same throughout the session and settled moderately lower on profit booking despite positive European cues. Investors turned cautious ahead of two-day Federal Reserve meeting that will begin tonight and monitored corporate earnings.
The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 17.60 points at 32,228.27 and the 50-share NSE Nifty declined 1.85 points to 9,964.55 after hitting record highs of 32,374.30 and 10,010.55, respectively.
After a historic high, experts expect consolidation in near term but in medium term, they feel, the market could be strong and started scaling new highs.
Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com advised buying on dips in the range of 9,920-9,950 levels. He said one should wait for the outcome of Federal Reserve meeting as he expects rangebound trade till that event gets passed.
Raamdeo Agrawal, Joint MD of Motilal Oswal said the new phase of corporate growth could take market to another level and GST would enable further growth for strong corporate institutions.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged at its two-day meeting that ends on Wednesday but the key focus will be commentary on further rate hikes.
European bourses were higher as investors monitored earnings and awaited Federal Reserve meeting. France’s CAC, Germany’s DAX and Britain’s rallied 0.6-1 percent at the time of writing this article. Asian markets ended mixed.
Back home, the broader markets outperformed benchmarks despite negative breadth. The BSE Midcap index gained 0.6 percent and Smallcap was up 0.12 percent while about five shares declined for every four shares rising on the BSE.
Nifty Bank ended off intraday record highs but ended at record closing high of 24,520.70, up 0.41 percent. SBI and ICICI Bank gained 0.3-0.6 percent.
Axis Bank (up 1.94 percent), Bharti Airtel (1.8 percent) and Hero MotoCorp (0.4 percent) ended higher ahead of earnings later today.
HDFC Bank ended at fresh record closing high of Rs 1,739.35, up 0.3 percent following thumbs up from brokerage houses to better-than-expected earnings despite farm loan waiver concerns.
Jefferies has upgraded the stock to buy and raised target price to Rs 2,000 while Goldman Sachs maintained buy rating with increased target at Rs 2,208, saying the lender is on course for a market capitalisation of USD 100 billion.
Technology stocks rebounded in second half of session, with TCS up 1.5 percent and Infosys 0.3 percent but Wipro fell 0.7 percent.
Vedanta shares rallied 3.66 percent after stellar earnings for the quarter ended June 2017 and further debt reduction while Asian Paints lost 0.4 percent as GST and higher raw material cost hit Q1 earnings.
Reliance Industries, Tata Motors, ITC, Lupin, L&T, Kotak Mahindra Bank and HUL were down up to 2 percent.
In broader space, Parsvnath Developers, Peninsula Land, Nitesh Estates, Shree Renuka, Bajaj Hindusthan and M&M Financial rallied up to 20 percent.
Idea Cellular was up 6.5 percent on getting approval from Competition Commission for merger with Vodafone India.
Delta Corp, HUDCO, GIC Housing,, Sterlite Technologies, Metalyst Forgings, Amtek Auto and Shalimar Paints fell upto 6 percent.
