Dalal Street Corner: Markets snap 3-day weakness, end 1.3% higher – what should investors do on Monday

Ending the week on a positive note, the Indian markets on Friday snapped a three-day losing streak to end around 1.3 per cent, with both the Sensex and the Nifty50 reclaimed their key levels of 60000 and 18000, respectively. The IT, financial and FMCG stocks led the surge in the market at the close. 

Even the broader markets gained, along with benchmarks as mid-cap surged 0.45 per cent and small-cap gained 0.29 per cent. Stocks such as Zomato, Indigo, Mayur Uniquoters, Monte Carlo, Astral, and Presitge each gained between 2-9 per cent on the exchanges on Friday.  

As many as 43 stocks closed in the green, while 6 declined and one remained unchanged on the Nifty50. IT stocks such as Tech Mahindra jumped most by over 4 per cent, followed by Hindalco up 3 per cent. While Wipro, HDFC, Infosys, HDFC Life and Bajaj Finserv each gained between 2-3 per cent. 

On the contrary, Bajaj Auto slumped most by around 3 per cent, followed by Tata Steel, Hero Motor, Axis Bank, NTPC, Power Grid, IOC each declined marginally at the market close today. 

The Initial Public Offer of Latent View Analytics on the final day was oversubscribed 326.49 times on Friday. The quota reserved for non-institutional investors queued most 850.66 times, followed by QIBs quota was subscribed 145.48 times and NII was subscribed 119.4 times.  

Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said, “The momentum, which was lost during the week, was regained as inflation worries started fading with investors shifting their focus to good quarterly earnings, economic recovery and strong domestic macro data points. Today’s market rally was led by the IT, energy, and realty stocks, while global peers traded mixed.” 

Rohit Singre, Senior Technical Analyst at LKP Securities said, “The index has moved above its strong hurdle zone of the 18k-mark, which hints if prices managed to hold above the 18000-mark then one can expect a current pullback to extend further towards 18200-18300 zone that are an immediate hurdle zone on the higher side also any din near 18000 mark will be again fresh buying opportunity.” 

“Markets recovered sharply and posted gains of over a per cent, taking a breather after the recent dip. Positive global cues led to a gap up but profit-taking trimmed the gains in the initial hours. The tone gradually changed with healthy buying in index heavyweights from the sectors such as IT, realty which supported the market to inch higher at the close,” Ajit Mishra, VP - Research, Religare Broking Ltd.