Mid-day Mood | Market listless as firm dollar, higher crude prices weigh on sentiment

Stock Market Today

The Indian shares traded lacklustre on September 7 afternoon, mirroring weakness in global markets. The spike in oil prices over the past week to a 10-month high amid concerns over supply shortages have fanned worries of sticky inflation and rate hikes, dampening sentiment.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) US services index recorded a higher-than-expected reading of 54.5 percent for August, further aggravating these concerns. It prompted a surge in the dollar index to over 105, the highest level in more than six months further weighing on investors.

At around noon, the Sensex was down 33.31 points or 0.05 percent at 65,847.21, and the Nifty was down 8 points or 0.04 percent at 19,603.00. About 1,823 shares advanced, 1,183 declined, and 106 were unchanged.

Despite the continuing upward momentum, the market lacks depth as investors' confidence is a bit shaken due to rising global uncertainty, Shrikant Chouhan, Head of Research (Retail), Kotak Securities, said.

“A fresh rise in US bond yields and the dollar index is creating uncertainty in global markets and in India, and this has once again led to offloading of local shares by the FIIs," he said, referring to foreign institutional investors selling spree.

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Stocks and Sectors 

Among the few stocks that bucked the trend was Larsen & Toubro, which jumped around 3 percent to a 52-week high on reports that the company was likely to bag a mega $2.9 billion (approximately Rs 24,000 crore) project from Saudi Aramco’s Jafurah unconventional gas development project.

Coal India was the biggest Nifty50 gainer, surging more than 5 percent.

Tata Consumer Products was down 2.5 percent after the company denied reports that it was in talks to acquire Haldiram’s. Another FMCG stock, Britannia, too, was down, trading a percent lower.

Some pharma stocks such as Sun Pharma fell prey to profit booking after recent gains. Metal names, too, were under pressure as a firm dollar hurt.

Banks, automobiles and information technology names, too, barely managed to sustain gains.

The broader market, however, resumed its outperformance, with the Nifty Midcap 100 and the Nifty Smallcap 100, both rising 0.5 percent.

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