Market Opening Bell: Indices open slightly lower; NIFTY50 below 24,300 level, SENSEX falls 172 pts, Tata Consumer top loser

The Indian stock market on Thursday, April 24, opened lower snapping its seven days of rally, following mixed signals from the Asian peers.

At 9:23 AM, the S&P BSE SENSEX fell 172.47 points, or 0.22%, at the 79,944.02 level, while NSE’s NIFTY50 was at the 24,274.65 level, declining 54.30 points, or 0.22%.

The market breadth, however, remained in favour of positives as 1,578 stocks advanced out of 2,199 traded on NSE.

During the early session, the broader market was trading higher, with both the Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap gauges gaining 0.11% and 0.22%, respectively.

Among sectors, Bank Nifty continued to remain under pressure, followed by the realty, oil and gas, metal and media sectors.

On Wednesday, the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought equities worth ₹3,332.93 crore on a net basis, according to exchange data.

Globally, the US markets closed higher on Wednesday amid hopes of trade war de-escalation.   All three major US stock indexes pared gains by the closing bell.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 419.59 points, or 1.07%, to 39,606.57; the S&P 500 rose 88.10 points, or 1.67%, to 5,375.86; and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 407.63 points, or 2.50%, to 16,708.05.

During the morning trade, the Asian markets remained mixed. Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 1% to 35,244, while Singapore's Straits Times gained 0.18% to 3,839. On the other hand, Hong Kong's Hang Seng and South Korea's KOSPI fell 0.35% and 0.55%, respectively.

As many as 2,445 stocks traded on the NSE during the early session, among which 1,516 stocks were trading in the green, 863 in the red and 66 shares remained unchanged.

This indicated that the market breadth was in favour of positives.

Meanwhile, 27 stocks hit their one-year highs in the early trade, while only 4 stocks touched their 52-week lows.

Further, 48 stocks hit their upper circuits while 12 hit their lower circuits.

India VIX, the volatility gauge, was trading 3.28% higher at 16.49 levels.

IndusInd Bank, Nestlé India, Tech Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever and Cipla were the most contributing stocks on the NIFTY50 index, rising as much as 3.22%.

On the other hand, Tata Consumers, Eternal, Bharti Airtel, Shriram Finance and ONGC were the biggest laggards on the 50-share index.  

The stock fell 3% to ₹1,115.1 apiece on the National Stock Exchange at 9:20 am.

Tata Consumer Products recorded a 59.18% increase in consolidated net profit to ₹344.85 crore in the latest January-March quarter due to volume growth in the domestic market and moderate price hike in some portfolios. The post-tax profit was ₹216.63 crore in the year-ago period.

The company reported a net profit of ₹189 crore in the January-March period of the last fiscal year.

Total income rose to ₹1,037 crore for the fourth quarter as against ₹933 crore logged in the year-ago period, Syngene International said in a regulatory filing.