Sensex Opens In the Red, Down Over 300 Points; Nifty Below 17,630; Rupee Weakens By 37 Paise

Domestic bourses on Wednesday opened in the red. The BSE Sensex opened about 320 points lower at 59,902.25, while the NSE Nifty was 84 points down at 17,627.30. The rupee also fell 37 paise to 82.29 against US dollar in the early trade.

On the BSE, 24 out 30 companies on the Sensex were trading in the red in the early trade. Among the top losers were Infosys (down 1.36 per cent), Tech Mahindra (minus 1.34 per cent), Bajaj Finserv (down 1.25 per cent), Sun Pharma (down 1.09 per cent), and HCL Tech (down 1.05 per cent).

On the BSE, the companies there were in the green were L&T, NTPC, Tata Steel, Maruti, UltraTech Cement and HDFC Bank, trading higher by up to 0.52 per cent.

V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said, “The dominant trigger pushing the global equity markets up or down this year has been the economic data from the mother market US. This data has not been consistent and, therefore, the markets have been volatile responding to alternate bouts of positive and negative news. The disinflation trend pushed the markets up while data indicating a strong economy and tight labour market pulled the markets down. This see-saw movement appears likely to persist for some more time.”

He added that the latest negative factor, from the market perspective, is the Fed chief Powell’s comment that ‘the ultimate level of interest rate is likely to be higher than previously anticipated’. So, markets are pricing in a 50bp rate hike in the next Fed meeting on March 21-22. In the near-term investors may adopt a twin strategy of opting for attractive fixed income returns with incremental investable funds while continuing to buy high quality stocks on market weakness.

On the rupee, Rahul Kalantri, vice-president (commodities) of Mehta Equities, said, “The USDINR 28 March futures contract was highly volatile and came off day’s lows. As per the daily technical chart, we observed that the pair is trading below its trend-line support level of 82.55 and MACD is showing negative divergence. Looking at the technical set-up, RSI is fetching below 50 levels but the pair is in an oversold zone… We suggest buying in the pair above 82.05 with a stop loss of 81.70 for the target of 82.35- 82.55.”

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