Stock Market HIGHLIGHTS: Sensex ends 158 pts higher amid wild swings on Budget day but Adani stocks play party pooper

Stock Market Today HIGHLIGHTS: Indian equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty50 finished a session characterised with wild swings on a mixed note on Wednesday, February 1, as the investor cheer brought by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Union Budget for 2023-24 was countered by an extended riot in Adani group stocks. The government's last full-year Budget before the general elections in 2024 had an infrastructure focus with a record outlay for railways, a higher defence Budget, and income tax benefits as well as savings-related perks for the common man. 

The Indian economy is estimated to expand seven per cent despite a slowdown across the world, said Sitharaman in her Budget speech. (Follow Zeebiz.com's Budget blog here)

Here are five key things to know about the February 1 Budget session on Dalal Street:

1) The Sensex finished the session with a gain of 158.2 or 0.3 per cent at 59,708.1, having gyrated in a range of 1,956.6 points around the flatline — rising to as high as 60,773.4 and falling to as low as 58,816.8 — during the session. The Nifty50 settled with a loss of 45.9 points or 0.3 per cent at 17,616.3, having recovered more than 250 points from its intraday low.

2) In the 50-scrip Nifty basket, 23 stocks managed to finish the day higher. ICICI Bank, JSW Steel, ITC, Tata Steel, Britannia, Cipla, HDFC Bank,, HDFC, Tata Consumer and Eicher were the top gainers, rising around 1-2 per cent. On the other hand, Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports were the top laggards in the pack, falling 26.7 per cent and 17.7 per cent for the day respectively. Among the other Nifty50 losers were HDFC Life, SBI Life, Bajaj Finserv, SBI, IndusInd, Bharat Petroleum and UPL, closing between 2.3 per cent and 10.8 per cent lower.

3) Among heavyweights, ICICI Bank, the HDFC twins, and ITC were the biggest boosts for the Nifty50, but Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports and SBI were the largest drags.

4) ITC shares managed to hold on to the green after the Budget proposed higher taxes on cigarettes. Other cigarette-related stocks, such as Godfrey Phillips, succumbed to selling pressure.  

5) Overall market breadth turned from extremely bullish in the morning to extremely bearish by the end of the day, with an advance-decline ratio of 3:5 at the close as 1,275 stocks rose and 2,266 fell on BSE.

6) Most experts praised the Union Budget for the coming financial year. In an interaction with Zee Business Managing Editor Anil Singhvi, market veteran Madhu Kela said: "It is a dream moment for India. We were not expecting it... The finance minister has delivered much more than the market expected."

7) The rupee ended a volatile session flat at 81.92 against the US dollar, having slumped below the 82 mark during the session. 

8) Foreign institutional investors continued to play spoilsport on Dalal Street, taking their net sales of Indian shares to Rs 41,464.7 crore in January, though domestic institutional investors came to the rescue of the bulls, making net purchases of Rs 33,411.9 crore, according to provisional exchange data.

9) European markets began the day stronger, mirroring gains across most of their Asian peers, amid optimism about a slower pace of hikes in benchmark interest rates as investors awaited the outcome of the FOMC's first policy meeting of 2023. The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.3 per cent at the last count, a day after it clocked its best performance January in January, with a gain of 6.7 per cent.

10) S&P 500 futures, however, were down 0.4 per cent, suggesting a weak start ahead on Wall Street. 

Catch minute-by-minute market action on the Budget day, market commentary and analysis, a disection of major Budget announcements, expert views, panel discussions, investment as well as trading ideas — and much more — on Zeebiz.com's special blog: