HomeMarket NewsStocks NewsSensex, Nifty close lower dragged by IT shares, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank; Midcaps outperform

Sensex, Nifty close lower dragged by IT shares, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank; Midcaps outperform

The Nifty closed the Friday session 13 points lower at 10,585, while the Sensex was down 79 points in the red at 35,159.

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By Sudarshan Kumar  November 9, 2018, 4:11:04 PM IST (Published)

Sensex, Nifty close lower dragged by IT shares, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank; Midcaps outperform
Indian equity market saw a mixed close on Friday with broader markets ending with gains, while both benchmark indexes of the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty50 ending in the red. The Nifty closed the Friday session 13 points lower at 10,585, while the Sensex was down 79 points in the red at 35,159. Benchmark indexes were dragged by IT stocks and index heavyweights Reliance Industries and HDFC Bank. The support came in from Hindustan Unilever, Maruti Suzuki India, Asian Paints and Yes Bank, helping to check losses.


The broader market gains helped market breadth to remain mildly in favour of advances with NSE Advance-Decline ratio at 1:1. The Nifty Midcap Index moved 205 points higher to 17,605.50 and the Nifty Bank rising 63 points to 25,771.

The banking shares recovered after Economic Affairs Secretary posted a tweet, saying “Lot of misinformed speculation is going around in media. Government’s fiscal math is completely on track. There is no proposal to ask RBI to transfer Rs 3.6 or 1 lakh crore, as speculated.”

Indian Bank was the top midcap index loser after reporting weak earnings for the July-September quarter. The public sector lender saw a jump of 56 percent in fresh slippages, while gross slippages came in at Rs 2,250 crore against Rs 1,442 crore a quarter ago. The net profit profit came in 66.8 percent lower at Rs 150.1 crore but the net interest income (NII)moved higher by 12 percent to Rs 1,731 crore.

From cement sector, India Cements reported operationally strong earnings with operating profit coming in at Rs 155 crore against the poll of Rs 140 crore and margin at 11.2 percent against an estimate of 10.4 percent.

In the futures markets, Nifty 10,500 Put option added 1.3 lakh shares in the open interest with margin slipping 10.4 percent. The Nifty 10,800 Call option added 3.1 lakh shares in the open interest with premium moving 9 percent lower. Nifty November Futures closed with a premium of 35 points against a premium of 25 points on Tuesday.

Stocks in Asia were broadly lower after the US Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged on Thursday at its latest policy meeting. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 2.39 percent to close at 25,601.92.

The mainland China markets also ended the trading week lower. The Shanghai composite shed 1.39 percent to close at around 2,598.87 and the Shenzhen composite declined by 0.43 percent to about 1,328.19.

The moves in China followed the country’s Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index for the month of October coming in at 2.5 percent and 3.3 percent higher, respectively, compared to a year ago. Those numbers were in line with expectations from a Reuters poll.

In other Asian market news, Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.05 percent to close at 22,250.25 while the Topix index saw losses of 0.49 percent to end the trading week at 1,627.98.

South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.31 percent to close at 2,086.09, with the moves coming after the country’s president, Moon Jae-in, fired his top economic policymakers and replaced them with people from within the government.

In Australia, the ASX 200 slipped by 0.11 percent to close at 5,921.8, with the major sectors mixed. Energy stocks fell by 1.25 percent, while the heavily weighted financial subindex recovered to see gains of 0.23 percent.