Taking Stock | Another day of selling; Sensex down 236 points, Nifty below 18,100

All sectors bled, barring banking stocks, ahead of the release of key earnings by private banking majors, he added.

For the week, BSE Sensex gained 360.59 points or 0.59 percent to end at 60,621.77 and Nifty50 rose 71.1 points or 0.39 percent to end at 18,027.7 levels.

Stocks and sectors

HUL, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, JSW Steel and Nestle India were among the biggest losers on the Nifty. The gainers included Coal India, HDFC Bank, Power Grid Corporation, HDFC and ITC.

On the sectoral front, except Nifty Bank, all indices ended in the red. Auto, FMCG, infra, information technology, metal and pharma were down 0.3-1 percent.

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BSE midcap and smallcap indices lost 0.5 percent each.

On the BSE, metal, and FMCG indices shed nearly a percent each, while auto, capital goods, healthcare and realty were down 0.5 percent each. Buying was seen in the bank, oil & gas and power names.

More than 100 stocks, including Usha Martin, Saksoft, PTC India, NHC Foods, Marksans Pharma, Jindal Stainless and APL Apollo Tubes, touched their 52-week high on the BSE.

Among individual stocks, a volume spike of more than 800 percent was seen in Indiabulls Housing Finance, Oberoi Realty and Coforge.

A short build-up was seen in ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company, Indiabulls Housing Finance and Delta Corp. A long build-up was seen in Persistent Systems, Coforge and HDFC.

Outlook for January 23

Amol Athawale, Deputy Vice President-Technical Analyst, Kotak Securities

Local markets underperformed their Asian peers in a lacklustre trend as the absence of fresh positive triggers continued to weigh on the sentiment. Profit-taking in telecom and realty shares led the downfall, even as selective buying was seen in banking, power and oil & gas shares.

The only certainty is the bouts of intra-day volatility in a particular range.

Technically, on weekly charts, the Nifty has formed a long-legged Doji candle, which indicates non-directional activity.

For the index, 18,000, or 20-day simple moving average (SMA), will act as the sacrosanct support in the near future, above it, the Nifty can retest 18,150-18,200. Below 18,000, the bearish sentiment is likely to accelerate and the index can slip to 17,850.

Gaurav Ratnaparkhi, Head of Technical Research, Sharekhan by BNP Paribas

The Nifty continued to consolidate just above the 20 WMA for yet another week. On the weekly chart, it has formed a Doji pattern for the second consecutive week. This shows indecision on the minds of the market participants.

The daily chart reveals that the index has moved out of a base triangle formation. After the breakout, the Nifty, however, is going through a brief consolidation before embarking on a larger up move.

The immediate support is at 18,000, where fresh buying interest can be seen. The short-term bullish stance will hold as long as the Nifty trades above the swing low of 17,760. On the higher side, the Nifty is expected to surpass the key hurdle zone of 18,260-18,300 and head towards 18,500.

Rupak De, Senior Technical Analyst, LKP Securities

The Nifty remained sideways during the week, as the benchmark index failed to provide any directional movement. On the higher end, it failed to reclaim the 50-day exponential moving average, which is considered a line of polarity between bullish and bearish market sentiment for the short term.

It remained below the 50-week exponential moving average. The sentiment remains indecisive as the Nifty formed a back-to-back Doji pattern on the weekly chart. However, the long-term bullish setup remains intact, with the higher top, higher bottom formation remaining in force.

On the lower end, the support is intact at 17,750, while resistance is pegged at 18,300. Breakout on either end will confirm the directional trend.

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