The decline comes after a recent upmove in the market following a positive development in the long-pending India-US trade deal, said Kranthi Bathini, Equity Strategist at WealthMills Securities.
Indian equity benchmarks witnessed a sharp selloff in Thursday's late trading session, dragged down by profit booking and weakness in technology stocks. The 30-share BSE Sensex pack tumbled over 700 points to hit a day's low of 83,516.67, while the NSE Nifty50 index slipped to 25,752.40.
The decline comes after a recent upmove in the market following a positive development in the long-pending India-US trade deal, said Kranthi Bathini, Equity Strategist at WealthMills Securities. “Nifty50 is facing some resistance at 26,000 level. At present, the trend suggests a 'buy-on-dips' and 'sell-on-rallies' trading strategy," he added.
Global factors also weighed on sentiment. The latest US jobs data showed the addition of 1,30,000 jobs last month, while unemployment fell to 4.3 per cent, reducing expectations of an imminent rate cut by the US Federal Reserve.
VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Investments, said the data points to the possibility of no rate cuts by the Fed in the near term.
"In India, too, it appears that the rate-cutting cycle is over since growth is good and inflation is expected to inch back to the RBI's long-term target by the end of FY27. Support to the market has to come from earnings growth," he said.
He added that sectors such as automobiles, jewellery, hotels, segments of capital goods, telecom and financials are performing well on the earnings front and could continue to attract investor interest.
Technology stocks remained under pressure amid global headwinds. "Tech stocks, reeling under the Anthropic shock, are unlikely to recover soon. The sharp dip in the ADRs of top Indian IT companies in the US yesterday indicates that Indian IT will continue to struggle," Vijayakumar noted.
The sharp gains in stocks such as Eicher, Titan and Apollo Hospitals following their results indicate that the market is rewarding better-than-expected earnings, the expert also said.
Despite intermittent profit booking, Vijayakumar believes the broader undertone remains resilient, aided by foreign institutional investor (FII) flows. "Even with occasional profit booking, the undertone of the market will remain resilient mainly because there is a trend of FIIs turning buyers. The fact that FIIs were buyers in six of the last seven trading sessions indicates that at least the trend of sustained selling is over. In the near term, the market is likely to consolidate around the current levels with an upward bias," he stated.
Nifty outlook
"Immediate trading range continues to be 25,700–26,220, even as we wait with caution for a reattempt to scale 26,020. The return of momentum would see us chasing 26,600–26,800," said Anand James, Chief Market Strategist at Geojit.
