Nifty and Sensex scale historic highs, then take a breather
mumbai — The historic 10,000-point level proved to be short-lived on Tuesday as the Nifty closed with a negative bias and the Sensex lost from its all-time high after investors went for profit in recent gainers.
The NSE benchmark made history, breaching the 10,000-point level for the first time by hitting an all-time high of 10,011.30 points at the outset, led by stronger-thanexpected earnings by blue-chips and continuous buying by foreign funds and domestic institutions.
But a wave of profit-booking dragged the gauge down by 1.85 points, or 0.02 per cent, to settle at 9,964.55 points.
Steady monsoon progress and the smooth take-off of the Goods and Services Tax had helped both key indices scale historic highs, traders said.
The flagship Sensex climbed to a fresh life high of 32,374.30 points before closing down 17.60 points, or 0.05 per cent, at 32,228.27 points. In the last two trading sessions, the key barometer had gained 341.47 points.
“Market made a historical day by touching 10,000 [points], supported by better earnings from blue-chips and strong liquidity. However, profit booking at higher levels pulled the market to mild correction due to psychological effect, muted Q1 results for midcaps and awaiting Fed monetary policy meet,” said Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Financial Services. Participants also looked up to the US Federal Reserve policy meeting later in the day. Key indices in the Asian region lay low.
Major losers include Lupin, which lost, 1.96 per cent, along with Tata Motors, Coal India and Sun Pharma. Asian Paints fell 0.35 per cent after the company reported a 20.23 per cent decline in consolidated net profit for the first quarter ended June.
Bharti Airtel surged 1.76 per cent after reports of the government considering giving telecom companies more time to pay for the spectrum they bought, in a bid to ease sectoral stress.
Axis Bank rose 1.94 per cent, TCS was up 1.50 per cent and Tata Steel climbed 1.03 per cent.
Domestic institutional investors bought shares worth ₹668.87 crore while foreign portfolio investors sold shares to the tune of ₹366.84 crore on Monday, showed provisional data.