Indian equity indices opened flat on Thursday, tracking negative cues from Asian and US markets. At 9:40 a.m., Sensex was at 81,816 up 31 points and Nifty was trading up 19 points at 25,071.
During the early trading hour, the overall trend of the market was positive. On the NSE, 1,134 shares were in the green while 759 shares in the red.
It is a case of marginal buying in the smallcap and midcap stocks. Nifty midcap 100 index rose 21 points or 0.04 percent to 59,179, while Nifty smallcap 100 index surged 46 points or 0.23 percent to 19,369.
PSU Bank, financial services, pharma, FMCG and media are major gainers among the sectoral indices. Metal, energy, realty and infra are major laggards.
The top gainers in the Sensex pack included Tech Mahindra, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Sun Pharma, Power Grid, NTPC, Nestle, ITC, Wipro and Tata Motors. UltraTech Cement, Infosys, HCL Tech, Tata Steel, Maruti Suzuki, JSW Steel and Axis Bank persisted as the top losers.
As market experts explain it, "Weak global cues and the consequent weak openings have proved to be opportunities to buy in the domestic market. This pattern may persist. A significant feature of the near-term market trend is that it is resilient and steadily moving up without sharp spurts thereby preventing a spike in valuations in the largecap category."
"The recent accumulation of IT stocks is the result of confidence that the soft-landing scenario in the US economy will see the execution of the orders on which the IT companies have been sitting for some time now," they said.
Selling is seen in the Asian markets. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai and Seoul are in the red. Only Jakarta markets are trading in the green. The US markets closed in the red in Wednesday's session.
Institutional Activity
The foreign institutional investors turned net sellers on August 28 as they sold equities worth Rs 1,347 crore, while domestic institutional investors bought equities worth Rs 439 crore on the same day.
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