Sensex Slips 110 pts, Nifty Below 16,250; Ruchi Soya Sprints 10%

After trading higher for better part of the day, equity markets turned volatile during the afternoon session, and ultimately eneded lower on Wednesday. With this, the equities snapped their two-day gaining streak as the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex gyrated 655 points intra-day before ending at 54,209, down 110 points or 0.2 per cent. At close, Nifty was down 19 points or 0.12 per cent at 16,240.30.

Tata Consumer Products, Shree Cements, UltraTech Cement, Cipla and HUL were among the top Nifty gainers. However, losers were Power Grid Corporation, BPCL, Apollo Hospitals, Tata Motors and Tech Mahindra.

Among sectors, buying was seen in the FMCG and Pharma, while selling was seen in the bank, capital goods, realty, IT, metal, PSU Bank, and oil & gas indices. BSE midcap index ended on flat note, while smallcap index was up 0.3 per cent.

Among stocks, Indian Oil Corp fell over 4.5 per cent on reporting a 31.4 per cent drop in its Q4 net profit at Rs 6,021.88 crore due to a margin squeeze in petrochemicals and drop in auto fuel sales.

Jet Airways rose 2 per cent. The airline operator has successfully operated all proving flights and is now eyeing the grant of air operator certificate (AOC) by aviation regulator DGCA, its owner Jalan-Kalrock Consortium has said.

VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said: “Stock market has an uncanny ability to surprise, and this was evident in the sharp 417 point pullback in Nifty yesterday. Sharp relief rallies triggered by short covering happen even in bear markets. It remains to be seen whether the rally has enough steam to sustain, particularly when the latest WPI inflation print has come at a disturbing 15.08 per cent. RBI can be expected to turn more hawkish in the coming policy meets. The Fed chief Powel’s recent statement that “Fed will not hesitate to raise rates till inflation is tamed” indicates that, globally, economies and markets will have to gear for a higher interest rate regime, going forward.”

“Investors can give priority to segments which will not be impacted much by rising inflation and stocks of companies with pricing power to pass on increased costs to consumers. High quality IT and telecom stocks are better placed to weather the storm,” said Vijayakumar.