Sensex, Nifty rangebound; metal shares underperform

The Indian equity benchmarks were trading on a narrow band on Tuesday as gains in banking and financial services shares were offset with losses in metal, auto, realty and oil & gas shares. The Sensex was trading in a range of 300 points while Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 24,865.10 and low of 24,765.80.

As of 9:24 am, the Sensex was up 64 points at 81,114 and Nifty 50 index advanced 15 points to 24,811.

Asian markets ex-China were trading lower with Japan's Nikkei down 1.37 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng down 6.25 per cent and South Korea's KOSPI declining 0.72 per cent.

Chinese markets opened after a week long holiday on a very strong note with Shanghai Composite up 5 per cent, SZSE Component index rising 9.46 per cent and China A50 index up 5.87 per cent.

Before the break, China announced the most aggressive stimulus measures since the pandemic and the CSI300 gained 25 per cent over five sessions. Turnover soared as heavy buying strained brokers and trading systems, and last Monday the CSI300 and the Shanghai Composite both notched their largest gains since 2008.

Back home, eight of 13 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading lower led by Nifty Metal index's 3 per cent fall. Metal stocks came under selling pressure as hopes of further stimulus measures from China faded, analysts said.

Nifty Auto, IT, Pahrma, Realty, Healthcare and Consumer Durable indices also fell between 0.2-0.7 per cent.

On the other hand, select banking, financial services and media shares were witnessing buying interest.

Mid- and small-cap shares were facing a mild selling pressure as nifty Midcap 100 index fell 0.11 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index declined 0.2 per cent.

Tata Steel was top Nifty loser, the stock fell 4 per cent to Rs 157.58. Tata Motors, JSW Steel, Hindalco, Wipro , Bharat Petroleum, HCL Technologies, Eicher Motors, ONGC, Hero MotoCorp and Titan also fell between 0.8-3.2 per cent.

On the flipside, Hindustan Unilever, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ultratech Cement, Axis Bank, Trent, Bharti Airtel, State Bank of India and Larsen & Toubro were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was marginally positive as 1,682 shares were advancing while 1,319 were declining on the BSE.