Market Opening Bell: Indices pare early losses; NIFTY50 trades above 23,300 mark, SENSEX up 31 pts; Maruti Suzuki top loser

Snapping its two days of rally, Indian equity indices on Wednesday, April 16, opened marginally lower following the global markets. It, however, recovered soon and turned green.

At 9:30 AM, the S&P BSE SENSEX was trading 31.20 points, or 0.04% lower, at 76,766.09, while NSE’s NIFTY50 was at the 23,331.90 level, rising 2.90 points, or 0.01%.

Meanwhile, the broader market held gains as both the midcap and small cap were trading in the green in the early trading period.

The market breadth, however, remained in favour of positives as 1,730 stocks advanced in the opening session out of 2,331 traded on NSE.

Among sectors, auto, pharma, IT, consumer durables, metal and oil and gas remained under pressure. PSU Bank counter, however, was trading 1% higher.

Maruti Suzuki, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Auto, Tata Consumer Products and Eternal were the biggest losing stocks, declining as much as 1.20%.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought equities worth ₹6,065.78 crore on a net basis on Tuesday, according to exchange data.

Globally, tariff war uncertainty kept the investors on edge. US stocks slipped marginally on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 155.83 points, or 0.38%, to 40,368.96, the S&P 500 fell 9.34 points, or 0.17%, to 5,396.63 and the Nasdaq Composite closed almost flat at 16,823.17, declining 8.32 points, or 0.05%.

Tracking the US market, bourses in Asia were mostly trading lower. Investors also remained concerned as chip-making major Nvidia said it would take $5.5 billion in charges as the US government limited exports of its H20 artificial intelligence chip to China.

On Wednesday morning, Japan’s Nikkei was trading 0.74% lower, while South Korea’s Kospi index also lost 0.64%. The Taiwan Weighted Index slipped 1.73%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was the biggest losing index, declining 2.53%. The Shanghai Composite was trading 0.92% lower on Wednesday morning.

As many as 2,432 stocks traded on the NSE during the early session, among which only 1,869 stocks were trading in the green, 508 in the red and 55 shares remained unchanged.

This indicated that the market breadth favoured positives.

As many as 32 stocks hit their one-year high in the early trade, while only 6 stocks touched their 52-week low.

Further, 58 stocks hit their upper circuits while 8 hit their lower circuits.

India VIX, the volatility gauge, was trading 5.39% lower at 15.26 levels.

The broader market was trading positively during the opening bell as Nifty Midcap 100 traded 0.49% higher at 52,229.70 and Nifty Smallcap 100 was at 16,290.60 levels, rising 0.69%.

The regulator has also debarred Anmol and Puneet Singh Jaggi from holding the position of a director or key managerial personnel in Gensol until further orders.

The stock was trading at ₹244.95, up 0.39%, on the NSE.

The stock climbed 3.23% to ₹585.45 apiece on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) at 9:25 am.

The private insurer posted a two-fold surge in its profit after tax to ₹386 crore for the latest January-March quarter due to lower expenses. In the year-ago period, it had posted a post-tax profit of ₹174 crore.