D-Street: Market Watch: What weighed on investor sentiment in today’s session on D-St | The Economic Times Podcast

Welcome to ETMarkets Watch, the show about stocks, market trends and money-making ideas. I am Saloni Goel and here are the top headlines at this hour.

-Dollar millionaires in India rise 11%, a study suggests
-Vedanta to invest up to $20 bn in chip business
-India Ratings pegs states’ fiscal deficit at 3.6%
-43% fewer domestic flyers in Jan over Dec
-Need to bridge global infra funding gap: FM
-Hitachi Energy bets big on data centres, RE

Let us take a quick glance at what happened on Dalal Street today.

It was another frail session for benchmark indices as they remained in a narrow range before settling with cuts on Friday. The tug of war between bulls and bears was a lacklustre affair throughout the day. Selling pressure in auto and pharma players dragged the markets lower, whereas select banks provided some support.

The volatility indicator, however, remained high – reflecting big swings in the coming days. Fear gauge India VIX spiked about a per cent and remained over 22-levels. The BSE barometer gyrated in a range of 690 points. The BSE Sensex dropped less than 60 points and settled close to 57,835 mark. The index has lost more than 1,100 points in the last six sessions. Its broader peer, Nifty50, shed less than 30 points to end the week above 17,275 levels. The index has dropped less than 100 points during the week. Broader markets underperformed the headline peers as both BSE midcap and smallcap indices settled lower dropping about a per cent each.

On Sensex, Ultratech Cement was the top loser, shedding 2 per cent. M&M, Infosys, Reliance, Bajaj Finance, Nestle, Power Grid, Airtel and Tech Mahindra dropped a per cent each. Among the gainers, HDFC jumped over a per cent, whereas L&T, Axis Bank and SBI settled over half a per cent each. Dr Reddy’s Labs, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank and HCL Tech posted decent gains. Close to 230 stocks hit upper circuits during the session and more than 300 stocks tested their lower circuit limits. As many as 28 stocks tested their 52-week highs during the session, whereas 44 other stocks tested their 52-week lows.

We have Gaurav Garg from CapitalVia Global Research to share his views on the action and the road ahead:

Welcome to the show sir:
1. Domestic markets wiped out their gains and turned volatile in the final hour. What weighed on the sentiments?
2. What are the key factors to guide the market movements in the next week?

We also caught up with Nilesh Jain from Centrum Broking to decode the technical charts for you.
1. Nifty 50 could not sustain above 17,300. What are the next key support and resistance levels?
2. Nifty Bank managed to settle with gains. What do the charts suggest about it?

Asian markets settled on a mixed note for the day. Major European markets were trading mostly with gains in the first few hours of trade. However, US stock futures were up hinting towards a positive start to US equities later in the day.

That’s all for now. Do check out ETMarkets.com for all the news, market analysis, investment strategies and dozens of stock recommendations. Enjoy your evening. Bye Bye!