SENSEX, NIFTY50 edge lower dragged down by losses in Bajaj Finance, Bharti Airtel

The Indian equity benchmarks edged lower in opening deals on Friday, December 26, dragged down by weakness in index heavyweights like Bajaj Finance, Bharti Airtel, Eternal, HDFC Bank, Sun Pharma and Tata Consultancy Services. The SENSEX fell as much as 183 points and NIFTY50 index touched an intraday low of 26,095 despite positive cues from Asian markets.

As of 9:23 am, the SENSEX was down 81 points at 85,327 and NIFTY50 index declined 15 points to 26,127.

Most of the Asian markets were trading higher with Japan's Nikkei rising 1%, Singapore's Straits Times advanced 0.05% and South Korea's KOSPI advanced 0.75% while Hong Kong and Thai markets were shut on account of holiday.

The S&P 500 Index gained for a fifth day Wednesday in a shortened session ahead of the Christmas holiday and silver also advanced for a fifth straight session and gold climbed as much as 0.6% as geopolitical tensions persisted.

Spot silver advanced as much as 2.2% to $73.4393 an ounce. The white metal has risen about 150% this year in a rally that has accelerated since a historic short squeeze in October, news agency Bloomberg reported.

Sectoral landscape

Nine of 15 major sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the NIFTY Consumer Durables index's 0.55% gain. Metal, pharma, auto, real estate, healthcare and FMCG shares were also witnessing a mild buying interest. While, banking, financial services and media shares were facing a mild selling pressure.

Among the individual shares, Ola Electric rose as much as 5.4% to hit an intraday high of ₹37.28 after the company on Thursday said it has received a sanction order from the Ministry of Heavy Industries for the release of incentives amounting to ₹366.78 crore under the production-linked incentive scheme.

Broader markets were outperforming their larger peers as NIFTY Midcap 100 index rose 0.44% and NIFTY Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.33%.

RVNL from the railway sector was top gainer in the NIFTY Midcap 100 index, the stock rose 8.5% to ₹375 as the new fares announced by the government came into effect from today.

This is the second time in a year that the ministry has revised passenger train fares. The earlier fare hike was implemented in July.

Justifying its decision, the ministry stated that the rationalising of fares has 'the objective of balancing affordability for passengers and sustainability of operations'.

Other railway shares such as Raitel Corporation, IRFC, IRCON, RITES and Titagarh Rail Systems also rose between 3%-6%.

NIFTY50 gainers and losers

Bharat Electronics was top gainer in the NIFTY50 index, the stock rose 1.8% to ₹407. Coal India, Adani Enterprises, Eicher Motors, Titan, Cipla and Dr Reddy's Labs also rose between 0.5%-1.15%.

On the flipside, Shriram Finance, Sun Pharma, Eternal, Bajaj Finance, Tata Steel, JSW Steel and Bajaj Finserv 0.3%-0.8%.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,790 shares were advancing while 1,331 were declining on the BSE.