Dalal Street Investment Journal

Indices Struggles, Small-Caps Surges

The Indian equity market witnessed a choppy action in today’s trade. The benchmark indices struggled to holds their gains. Ultimately we saw small profit booking and frontline indices closed on negative note. The majority of selling was witnessed in the banking stocks and banking index fell around 75 points. The Banking and Capital Goods indices too closed in a negative territory. The Nifty ends on nominal negative note and was down by 10 points in today’s trade and closed at 8767 while Sensex was down by 5 points and closed at 28879.

The advance-decline ratio on NSE was on a positive side, as the day ended with 1659 shares in green and 1144 shares in the red zone.

Top Nifty Gainers: Sesa Sterlite closed the day higher by 4.42%, followed by Idea Cellular, NMDC, IDFC and SBI.

Top Nifty Losers: Cipla closed the day lower by 2.70%, followed by Zee Entertain, Lupin, Hindalco and Tech Mahindra.

The performances of sectoral indices were mixed in today’s session. Banking stocks dragged the fronline indices on lower side and were down by 76 points. This was followed by Capital Goods and Healthcare stocks that too failed to sustain their early gains and was down by 55 points and 33 points respectively. However, Small-Caps, Mid-Caps and Metals managed to close in positive territory and were up by more than 50 points each. Oil & Gas, Consumer Durable and FMCG closed in green mark, up around 30 points each.

The Asian markets witnessed some positive scenario. The Hang Seng market continues with its up move and was up by 328 points. This was followed by Shanghai Composite and Taiwan market that were up by 77 points and 49 points respectively. However the Nikkei market saw negative movement, and was down by 30 points.

Buzzer: Zee Entertain was down by more than 2.94% on the bourses today and closed below at the technical level around Rs 347. If the stock opens below this level, it may touch Rs 340/325 mark in the next few sessions.