Closing Bell: Nifty settles near 16,200, Sensex ends flat dragged by metal stocks; Auto, IT gain

After opening firmly, the Indian market closed marginally lower largely dragged by metal stocks on Monday. Nifty Metal closed with nearly 8% cuts as JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Hindalco led the drag as stocks corrected up to 13% on Monday.  

"Markets gave up all its gains in the afternoon Trade today as it simply could not recover after the Export Tax imposed on Steel products with the Metal Index falling almost 9% to 5200 levels in Morning Trade," said S Ranganathan, Head of Research at LKP securities. 

The prolonged Russia-Ukraine conflict coupled with its consequences and inflationary pressures weighed heavily in the minds of investors and traders, he said.  

"Prospects of additional market borrowings by the GOI in the wake of the tax cuts on fuel to tame inflation also came to the forefront," the expert higlighted.  

Kunal Shah - Senior Technical & Derivative Analyst at LKP Securities, said Nifty metal index on the back of government policy news witnessed a massive sell-off. "The Index is trading at a very crucial support of 5,100 and if fails to sustain above it will lead to a further sell-off. The upside resistance stands at 5,800 and the index remains in a sell-on-rise mode,"said Shah.

Meanwhile, benchmarks Nifty50 and the Sensex ended lower by around 0.3% and 0.07% respectively as the former ended near 16,200 and the latter closed flat near 54,300 

In the broader market, Nifty midcap and small cap dropped 0.3% and 0.8% respectively.  

In the highly volatile market, auto stocks came to the rescue as Nifty auto gained more than one and half per cent.  

Beside Auto, Nifty IT too gained over one per cent.  

Among stocks, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti, Hindustan Unilever, Asian Paints, L&T, Wipro, tech Mahindra and Infosys gained the most on the benchmarks.  

JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Divis laboratories, Hindalco, ONGC, Ultratech cement, ITC, Power Grid, HDFC and HDFC Bank led the decline.