SENSEX, NIFTY50 today: Wall Street cues, FII activity, and key things to know before Opening Bell

The Indian equity benchmarks are set to open lower on Thursday, September 25, as indicated by NIFTY futures traded at Gift City in Ahmedabad. As of 7:30 am, The Gift NIFTY futures fell 0.2% or 49 points to 25,071 amid subdued global cues.

In yesterday's session, the SENSEX and NIFTY50 indices fell for a fourth straight session dragged down by losses in index heavyweights like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and Bharat Electronics.

Asian markets

Most of the Asian markets were trading in a narrow range on Thursday as they were looking for fresh cues for up move after the AI-fuelled rally on Wall Street cooled overnight.

Japan's Nikkei was up 0.2%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng and South Korea's KOSPI were trading on a flat note, up 0.03% and 0.02% respectively.

China's Shanghai Composite declined 0.12% and while Taiwan Weighted was up 0.2%.

Wall Street update

US stocks ended lower on Wednesday after the AI-fuelled rally on Wall Street took a pause.

The S&P 500 index fell 0.3%, Nasdaq declined 0.34% while Dow Jones dropped 0.4% as investors digested cautious comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell about when the central bank might next cut US interest rates, news agency Reuters reported.

FII/DII activity

Foreign institutional investors sold shares worth ₹2,425.75 crore on Wednesday while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth ₹1,212 crore, data from the National Stock Exchange showed.

The FIIs have so far this month sold shares worth ₹11,582 crore and for the calendar year they have been net sellers to the tune of ₹1,42,217 crore, as per data from the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL).

Stocks to watch

An RBI bulletin said on Wednesday the prospects for NBFCs in segments like vehicle loans and loans against gold appear robust, buoyed by improvements in vehicle sales and rising gold prices.

Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius, Nippon India Mutual Fund (MF), Edelweiss Life Insurance Company, Ward Ferry Management, Societe Generale, Dublin-based Mediolanum International Funds and BNP Paribas Financial Markets are among the entities that have bought stakes in Akzo Nobel India, as per block deal data on the NSE.

The deal was signed for the development and commercialisation of Trastuzumab Rezetecan, which is a drug aimed at treating different types of cancer. It is a next-generation antibody drug conjugate (ADC), Glenmark Pharma said in a regulatory filing.

The consortium will participate in the Expression of Interest notice issued by the Government of India’s (GoI) Aeronautical Development Agency by way of submitting a response in the coming weeks, the press release said.

Trade setup

The 21-day exponential moving average (EMA) level of 25,032 will be crucial for NIFTY50 index to watch out for in Thursday’s trading session. The next support level continues to hold at 24,929 which is placed at 50-day EMA.

On the options data front, 25,000 puts hold the highest open interest, indicating a strong support for the coming monthly expiry. On the other hand, the 25,500 calls hold the highest open interest, indicating strong resistance for the current expiry.