Markets Recede From Two-Week Highs; Banks, FMCG, IT Stocks Lead Gains

NDTV Profit Team

17 Oct 2018, 12:24 PM IST

Share Markets On Wednesday: RIL, due to report its Q2 earnings later in the day, traded 0.92% higher.

After a solid start, the domestic share markets pared early gains to recede from their two-week high levels on Wednesday. At 12:13 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex traded at 35,310.30, up 147.82 points or 0.42 per cent after rising as much as 442.95 points earlier. The Nifty50 barometer of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) traded at 10,606.25, up 21.50 points or 0.20 per cent, after earlier gaining as much as 125.4 points. The intraday high of the Sensex was so far registered at 35,605.43 and that of the Nifty at 10,710.15.

Twenty one stocks in the 50-share Nifty pack traded in the green. HCL Tech, Coal India, Infosys, ITC, and Wipro led the charge, gaining between 1.68 and 2.65 per cent.

Infosys reported its September quarter net profit at Rs 4,110 crore after market hours on Tuesday.

Reliance Industries (RIL), which is due to report its second-quarter earnings later in the day, traded 0.83 per cent higher.

In the sectoral landscape, banks, FMCG and IT stocks traded with gains. Stocks of non-banking financial companies capped the gains as 13 out of 20 financial stocks were down on the NSE.

"We should have followed how global markets behaved, but it is more to do with the sell-off. FIIs (foreign institutional investors) are selling regularly after a break of a day... All financials are getting hit badly, liquidity is again becoming tighter," AK Prabhakar, head of research at IDBI Capital, was quoted as saying in a report by news agency Reuters. The rally from 10,138 points to 10,710 points is just a pull-back one, he added.

In the global markets, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.7 per cent and South Korea 1.2 per cent, according to a report by news agency Reuters. Chinese blue chips, however, lagged with a gain of only 0.2 per cent.

On Tuesday, the Sensex had closed at 35,162.48, up 297.38 points or 0.85 per cent, and the Nifty50 had settled at 10,584.75, with a gain of 72.25 points or 0.69 per cent. Provisional NSE data showed that in the previous session, domestic institutional investors purchased net equities of Rs 1,059.44 crore. (With agency inputs)