Market holiday today: BSE, NSE to remain closed for Mahavir Jayanti

Stock Market Holiday

The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and the BSE will remain shut on April 4 on account of Mahavir Jayanti.

Wholesale commodity markets, including metal and bullion, will also remain closed. There will be no trading activity in the forex and commodity futures markets either.

On April 3, the S&P BSE Sensex ended 114.92 points or 0.19 percent higher at 59,106.44, while Nifty was up 38.20 points or 0.22 percent at 17,398.

“Domestic equities remained lacklustre ahead of the RBI policy meeting outcome. Nifty opened higher but immediately gave up its initial gains to trade flat for most part of the session. It however, recovered in the last hour to finally close 38 points higher at 17398 levels,” said Siddhartha Khemka, Head - Retail Research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

“Sectorially it was mixed bag with major buying seen in Auto and PSU Bank. Auto sector saw a renewed interest after auto majors announced better than expected monthly numbers. Power sector too remain in focus after Tata Power and Adani announced tariff rise for Mumbai region.”

“Upstream oil companies were also in limelight after crude oil prices rose to one-month high post OPEC’s surprise production cut. RBI’s policy announcement would be the key event to watch out this week where in investors would gauge for indication with regards to rate hike pause. This along with shortened trading week would keep the market range-bound,” he added.

Hero MotoCorp, Coal India, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki and Eicher Motors were among the biggest gainers on the Nifty, while losers were BPCL, Apollo Hospitals, Adani Enterprises, ITC and Infosys.

On the sectoral front, auto and PSU Bank indices gained 1 percent each and realty index up nearly 1 percent, while selling was seen in the FMCG, metal, power, oil & gas and information technology stocks.

The BSE midcap index up 0.4 percent, while smallcap index rose 1 percent.

"The benchmark indices experienced range-bound activity. Although the Sensex gained 114 points, the Nifty ended 38 points higher. While intraday profit booking was observed in a few Oil and Gas and Metal stocks, the Auto and PSU Banks indices among sectors both increased by over 1 percent," said Shrikant Chouhan, Head of Equity Research (Retail), Kotak Securities.

"Technically, the Nifty is holding a bullish pattern on daily charts, and it is continuously producing a higher bottom shape on intraday charts, which is mostly favourable. The market structure is positive in our opinion, but owing to briefly overbought conditions, we could see some profit taking at higher levels," he added.

Buying on dips and selling on rallies would be the best course of action for traders at the moment. In the near future, the index's important support and resistance levels will be 17,300–17,250 and 17,500–17,550 respectively.

On April 3, 29, the rupee ended 16 paise lower at 82.35 per dollar against previous close of 82.19.