Sensex ends down 90 pts, Nifty below 10K on caution ahead of inflation, IIP data
The market wiped out morning gains in last couple of hours of trade and ended lower on Wednesday as investors turned cautious ahead of September CPI inflation and August industrial output data due on Thursday. The cut in India’s growth forecast by World Bank also dampened sentiment.
The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 90.42 points at 31,833.99, while the 50-share NSE Nifty ended below 10,000-mark, down 32.15 points at 9,984.80.
“September CPI inflation is expected to surge to 3.52% from 3.36% while the rising crude oil price and volatility in rupee may limit RBI interference on key rate,” Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services said.
Additionally, earnings season will kick-start tomorrow with the result of IT heavyweight and market will take direction from the expectation & the actual numbers, he added.
Jayant Manglik, President, Retail Distribution, Religare Securities said he feels volatility tends to remain high during the earnings season and any escalation in geo-political tension will further worsen the situation.
Put together, traders should prepare themselves for eventful week ahead, he advised.
The broader markets hit the most as the Nifty Midcap and Smallcap indices lost more than 1 percent on weak breadth. About 1,129 shares declined against 456 advancing shares on the BSE.
Meanwhile, India’s GDP may slow from 8.6 percent in 2015 to 7 percent in 2017 because of disruptions by demonetisation and the GST, the World Bank has forecast and warned that subdued private investment due to internal bottlenecks could put downside pressures on the country’s potential growth. The International Monetary Fund also lowered India’s growth projection to 6.7 percent in 2017, 0.5 percentage points less than its previous two forecasts and slower than China’s 6.8 percent.
All sectoral indices barring IT ended in red today. PSU Bank index fell 2.4 percent, may be after disappointing earnings from Lakshmi Vilas Bank that reported a 84 percent degrowth in net profit on sharp rise in provisions for the quarter ended September 2017.
Nifty Bank, Metal and Pharma indices were down 1-1.4 percent while IT index gained 0.55 percent ahead of TCS earnings that will be announced on Thursday after market hours. TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies gained 1-1.7 percent but Infosys fell 0.5 percent.
Bharti Airtel tanked 5 percent and Bharti Infratel was up 2.66 percent on a media report indicated that KKR-led consortium of funds are in talks to acquire Indus Towers and Bharti Infratel.
Oil marketing companies HPCL, IOC and BPCL were up 1.5-4 percent while Vedanta, Tata Motors, Yes Bank and SBI slipped 2-2.6 percent.
In the broader space, JM Financial, DHFL, Petronet LNG, Infraprastha Gas, LIC Housing Finance, Reliance Capital, Manappuram Finance, TVS Electronics, Marksans Pharma, Graphite India, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, Andhra Bank, OBC and PNB were down 2-10 percent.
Avenue Supermarts continued its run, up 2.4 percent. Uttam Galva was up 12 percent as a media report said four companies are in race to acquire the company.
Goa Carbon was up 3 percent as July-September quarter profit increased nearly three-fold to Rs 13.8 crore YoY while GM Breweries was up 20 percent as Q2 net profit surged 41.1 percent to Rs 15.7 crore YoY.
South Indian Bank was up 2 percent as management said the worst is behind after disappointing earnings.
On the global front, Asian markets ended higher, taking cues from signs of confidence in the US while European markets were flat at the time of writing this article.
