Market Commentary - Mid-Session
Market trade lower; IT shares decline As on : 16-Dec-24  14:37

The headline equity benchmarks traded with substantial cuts in the mid-afternoon trade. The Nifty traded below the 24,700 level. IT shares witnessed profit booking after advancing in the past five consecutive trading sessions.

At 14:28 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, dropped 409.02 points or 0.50% to 81,699.69. The Nifty 50 index fell 113.15 points or 0.46% to 24,655.15.

The broader market outperformed the frontline indices. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index added 0.60% and the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.45%.

The market breadth was positive. On the BSE, 2,306 shares rose and 1,786 shares fell. A total of 113 shares were unchanged.

Economy

The annual inflation rate based on the All India Wholesale Price Index (WPI) is 1.89% (provisional) for November 2024, compared to November 2023. The positive inflation rate in November 2024 is primarily due to an increase in prices of food articles, food products, other manufactured goods, textiles, machinery, and equipment.

The Food Index, consisting of 'food articles' from the primary articles group and 'food products' from the manufactured products group, decreased from 201.2 in October 2024 to 200.3 in November 2024. The rate of inflation based on the WPI Food Index decreased from 11.59% in October 2024 to 8.92% in November 2024.

The HSBC Flash India Composite Output Index registered a value of 60.7 at the end of December 2024. This marked an increase from the final reading of 58.6 in November, indicating the strongest growth rate observed in four months. The rise was driven by faster growth in both the manufacturing and services sectors.

The HSBC Flash India Manufacturing PMI stood at 57.4 in December as compared with 56.5 in November 2024, this pointed to an improvement in manufacturing sector conditions that was substantial and stronger than seen on average across the series history.

The HSBC Flash India Services PMI business was at 60.8 in December 2024 as against 58.4 in November 2024.

Meanwhile, India's foreign exchange reserves dropped by $3.235 billion to $654.857 billion, a five-month low, for the week ended December 6, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) revealed on Friday.

Foreign currency assets, a major component of the reserves, decreased by $3.228 billion to $565.623 billion for the week ended December 6, 2024, as per the data.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty IT index slipped 0.84% to 45,609.60. The index rallied 2.86% in past five consecutive trading sessions.

Tata Consultancy Services (down 1.38%), Tech Mahindra (down 1.01%), Infosys (down 0.85%), HCL Technologies (down 0.75%), L&T Technology Services (down 0.61%), Wipro (down 0.52%), Persistent Systems (down 0.26%), Mphasis (down 0.17%) and Coforge (down 0.04%) slipped.

Numbers to Track:

The yield on India's 10-year benchmark federal paper advanced 1.78% to 6.850 as compared with the previous close of 6.730.

In the foreign exchange market, the rupee edged lower against the dollar. The partially convertible rupee was hovering at 84.8375, compared with its close of 84.8050 during the previous trading session.

MCX Gold futures for the 5 February 2024 settlement added 0.06% to Rs 77,780.

The US Dollar index (DXY), which tracks the greenback's value against a basket of currencies, was down 0.16% to 106.83.

The United States 10-year bond yield declined 0.25% to 4.388.

In the commodities market, Brent crude for February 2024 settlement lost 43 cents, or 0.58% to $74.06 a barrel.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Alphageo (India) was locked in upper circuit of 20% after the company received contracts from Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for 2D seismic data acquisition aggregating to Rs 118.63 crore.

Jindal Worldwide surged 9% after the company's consolidated net profit jumped 35.92% to Rs 17.33 crore on 45.68% increase in revenue from operations to Rs 570.80 crore in Q2 FY25 over Q2 FY24.

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