Mid-day Mood | Sensex, Nifty slip into red from record highs, broader indices outshine benchmarks

A dividend of Rs 7 per share was also approved by the board.

After hitting fresh record highs, frontline indices Sensex and Nifty erased all gains and slipped into the negative territory by April 4 mid-day. Market experts suggest buy-every-dip from here on as Nifty is poised to march to 23,000 mark soon.

Around noon, the Sensex was down 85.30 points or 0.12 percent at 73,791.52, and the Nifty was down 43.90 points or 0.20 percent at 22,390.80. The market breadth was in favour of gainers as about 1,963 shares advanced, 1,358 declined, and 82 remained unchanged.

Broader markets, however, defied the weak sentiment, with the Nifty Midcap 100 and the Nifty Smallcap 100 indices rising up to 0.3 percent on April 4 noon.

Feroze Azeez, deputy CEO of Anand Rathi Wealth, said that this rally in broader indices were supported by foreign institutional investor (FII) flows. "We recommend around 80 percent exposure to equities in portfolio via the mutual fund platform," he said.

Sectoral trend

Bank Nifty was the top sectoral performer on April 4 afternoon led by gains in private lenders HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, and RBL Bank. HDFC Bank was the top contributor of the index after gross advances rose 55.4 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. Its domestic retail loans surged 108.9 percent YoY in Q4FY24.

On the contrary, Nifty PSU Bank was the top laggard weighed by Maharashtra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, and UCO Bank.

Technical view

Vaishali Parekh, Senior Vice-President of Technical Research at Prabhudas Lilladher said that a decisive breach of Nifty's 22,500 shall trigger for fresh upward move to next targets of 22,800 and 23,400 levels in the coming days. "The support for the day is seen at 22,300, while resistance is seen at 22,600," she said.

Vedanta: Shares of Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta rose around 3 percent to hit 52-week high of Rs 312.50 on NSE on delivering the highest ever annual volume across key businesses. So far in the day, a total of 1 crore Vedanta shares changed hands on BSE and NSE combined, compared to the 1-week average trading volume of 96 lakh shares.

Gold financiers: As gold glitters to fresh record highs, related stocks Manappuram Finance and Muthoot Finance surged up to 4 percent on April 4 intra-day deals. The yellow metal reached a new lifetime high of 70,248, according to MCX, after US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell assured that it will likely begin cutting rates at some point this year.

HDFC Bank: Shares of this private sector lender Bank rose 2 percent on April 4, a day after the country's largest private lender shared robust business update for the quarter ended on March 31, 2024. HDFC Bank was the top Nifty gainer and the top contributor in Bank Nifty gains, pushing the banking index to a fresh record high.

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