Weekly Market Wrap: D-street ended in red as RBI keeps rates unchanged. What lies ahead?
Indian equity benchmarks ended the week with minor cuts as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) kept its key interest rate unchanged for a sixth consecutive meeting, in line with expectations.
The BSE Sensex declined 490 points, or 0.68 per cent, at 71,595.49 during the week ended on February 09, 2024. While the Nifty slipped 71 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 21782.5.
Sector-wise, the BSE Oil & Gas index surged the most (3.8 per cent) during the week gone by. While BSE Healthcare index registered a gain of 3.4 per cent followed by BSE Realty jumped 2.5%. On the other hand, the BSE FMCG index fall 2.3 per cent.
As many as 24 stocks in the Nifty 50 index delivered a positive return for investors in the week. With a weekly gain of 11.4 per cent, State Bank of India emerged as the top gainer in the index. It was followed by Bharat Petroleum Corporation (10 per cent), Coal India (8.6 per cent), Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (8.3 per cent), and Tata Consultancy Services (4.2 per cent). Tata Motors and Hero MotoCorp also advanced by over four per cent.
On the other hand, UPL, ITC, and Bajaj Finserv declined 14.3 per cent, 5.6 per cent, and 4.9 per cent, respectively.
Dr. V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services said, The FPI investment trend of selling in equity and buying in debt witnessed in January is continuing in February. Through 9th February FPIs had sold equity for Rs 3074 crores and bought debt worth Rs 15093 crores.
This takes the total equity selling in 2024, so far, to Rs 28818 crores and debt buying to Rs 34930 crores. ( Source: NSDL). “The main trigger for this divergent trend in equity and debt is the high valuation in the Indian equity market and the rising bond yields in the US” Vijayakumar said.
