Nifty50: 16,605▼ 187 (-1.1%)
Sensex: 55,468▼ 778 (-1.3%)
- The markets opened with a gap down and continued to slide downwards before recovering marginally in the last hour of trade.
- In all, 34 stocks of the Nifty50 pack ended in the red.
- With the tensions escalating between Russia-Ukraine and weekly derivative expiry tomorrow, markets are expected to remain volatile.
Among the Nifty sectoral indices, Metal (+4.0%) and Media (+1.8%) were the top gainers, while Auto (-2.9%) and Bank (-2.3%) were the top losers
| Top gainers | Today's change |
| Coal India | ▲ 8.5% |
| HDFC Life | ▲ 7.0% |
| SBI Life | ▲ 5.6% |
| Top losers | Today's change |
| Maruti | ▼ 6.0% |
| Dr Reddy | ▼ 5.1% |
| Bajaj Auto | ▼ 4.6% |
For more updates on F&O, click here.
Here are the top stories of the day.
Oil explorers surge as crude spikes
Crude oil prices touched the $110 per barrel mark, their highest levels since 2014, as the Russia-Ukraine crisis escalated. Shares of state-owned oil exploration and production companies like OIL and ONGC saw a sharp rise today.
Experts believe that the earnings outlook for upstream PSUs has improved considerably given the recent spike in crude oil prices and the expectation of further steep hike in domestic gas prices.
Auto sales mixed in February
Maruti Suzuki’s domestic passenger vehicle (PV) sales dipped nearly 8% year-on-year to 1,33,948 units in February as the chip shortage had a minor impact on vehicle production. On the other hand, Mahindra and Mahindra’s PV sales rose 80% year-on-year to 27,663 units led by the highest-ever monthly volume growth of 79% in the SUV category.
Similarly, Tata Motors PV sales rose 47% year-on-year to 39,981 units driven by the electric vehicle (EV) category which saw a nearly 6-fold jump in sales.
Hindustan Unilever hikes prices
The FMCG major hiked prices across its product portfolio by 3-13% in the month of February in multiple tranches. The price increases come on the back of constant rise in raw material costs.
Rising oil prices also have an impact on transport, logistics and packaging expenses of companies across sectors. Dabur had also hinted at a price hike in the post-earnings investor call, while Britannia is looking to hike prices by 10% in the March quarter on account of the unprecedented commodity inflation.
IPO Corner
According to reports, the government is expected to hold a meeting this week to review the timing for the launch of LIC IPO. This comes at a time when the Russia-Ukraine conflict has sparked a turmoil in the markets. It’s important to note here that the government has been planning to launch the LIC IPO this month to meet its revised disinvestment target for FY22.
Good to know
What is short selling?
Short selling refers to a trading strategy that involves selling the stock first at a higher price and then buying it back at a lower price in order to make a profit. Short sellers profit from a drop in the security price contrary to long investors who profit when the price goes up. For instance, assume you have a stock that is trading at ₹100 and believe that it might fall to, say, ₹80 in the short term. In this case, you might consider selling it at ₹100 and buying at ₹80, thereby making a profit of ₹20. While short selling, it is important to keep a stop-loss at a price above your sell price since the risk is unlimited if price doesn’t go down as expected. In the above example, you may want to keep a stop loss at, say, ₹105, so that if the price goes above ₹100, your loss is limited to ₹5 per share.
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