NEW DELHI: India’s equity market ended its 6-day bull run as benchmark indices - Sensex and Nifty- closed marginally lower on Thursday amid high volatility. The beginning of Thursday’s trading session was strong but emerging development on the geopolitical tension between China-Taiwan triggered a sharp sell-off.
The BSE Sensex saw a swing of 1,136 points during the day, before settling at 58,299, down 52 points from Wednesday’s closing. The Nifty, on the other hand, closed at 17,382, down 6 points, after hitting a high of 17,491 and a low of 17,161 during the session.
Market participants, at present, are closely eyeing the outcome of RBI’s monetary policy meeting on Friday. The performance of the global indices amid the fresh developments on China-Taiwan tension is also likely to dictate the movement of Indian indices.
“Markets snapped its 6-day winning streak on the back of profit booking. Volatility was the hallmark of today’s trade as the Nifty wobbled amidst reports of rising US-China tension. The positive takeaway however was that Nifty recouped most of its losses from day’s low of 17161,” said Prashanth Tapse - research analyst and senior VP (research), Mehta Equities.
Siddhartha Khemka, head - of retail research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, said volatility has increased in the domestic market in the last 3 days and after the sharp run-up in the last few days and Nifty now trades at 20x FY23 PE, which is above its 10-year average, thus offering limited upside in the near term.
“RBI’s policy outcome on Friday would be the key event that the market would track.
Going forward, it could be a tug of war between domestic and global factors which would determine the market direction,” added Khemka. Coming to Thursday’s trading session, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Nestle India, Infosys and Apollo Hospitals were the top gainers on the Nifty index. NTPC, Tata Consumer Products, Coal India, SBI and Reliance Industries were the laggards. Among sectors, Metal, IT and Healthcare surged 1-2%, while the Realty index fell 1%.