On Thursday, benchmark stock market indices opened marginally lower and continued their sluggish run.
The S&P BSE Sensex was down 67.80 points at 72,694.09 at 9.44 am, while the NSE Nifty50 fell 10.40 points to 21,987.30. Despite the domestic-focused broader market indices rising, they remained under pressure due to sustained profit booking.
Among sectoral indices, heavyweights Nifty Bank and Nifty Financial Services traded 0.5 percent lower, while Nifty IT fell 0.3 percent. Nifty Realty fell over 1 percent and emerged as the top loser among sectoral indices.
Conversely, Nifty Oil & Gas and Nifty Media gained over 1.2 percent.
The top five gainers on the Nifty50 were Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports, Hero MotoCorp, M&M, and Hindalco. Meanwhile, the top drags on the 50-share index were JSW Steel, Tata Steel, LTIM, TCS, and Bajaj Finance.
Shares of digital payments firm Paytm fell nearly 3 percent in early trade ahead of the Reserve Bank of India’s March 15 deadline for its associate, Paytm Payments Bank, to wind down some key operations.
Deven Mehata, research analyst at Choice Broking, commented on the market situation, stating, “The market had a severe downturn yesterday, as Nifty closed almost at its daily low below 22,000 levels following an abrupt sell-off from higher levels.” He advised traders to exercise extreme caution and strictly adhere to stop-loss levels. Additionally, he suggested that if Nifty continues to fall toward the strong support level of 21,800, investors might consider it an opportune time to make new medium- to long-term investments.
