SENSEX, NIFTY50 trade in narrow range; IT stocks resume selloff after a two-day pause

The Indian equity benchmarks were trading in a narrow range on Wednesday, February 18, as gains in index heavyweights like Reliance Industries, State Bank of India, Bajaj Finance, Bharat Electronics and ITC were offset by losses in Infosys, HDFC Bank, Adani Ports, Maruti Suzuki and Tech Mahindra. The SENSEX traded in a band of 205 points and NIFTY50 index touched an intraday high of 25,760 and a low of 25,705.

As of 9:22 am, the SENSEX was down 21 points at 83,429 and NIFTY50 index declined 8 points to 25,717.

Asian markets were trading higher on Wednesday with Japan's Nikkei rising 1.3% and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index advancing 0.3%.

Trading volumes are expected to be light, with markets in China and Hong Kong closed for the Lunar New Year holiday.

US stocks ended on a flat note after staging wild swings during the session on Tuesday as cautious sentiment prevailed on Wall Street amid concerns about artificial-intelligence boom.

The S&P 500 index ended 0.1% higher, Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.07% and tech heavy Nasdaq gained 0.14%.

Back home, information technology (IT) shares resumed their selloff after a pause of two days. The measure of IT shares on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), NITY IT index, dropped as much as 1.3% to hit an intraday low of 32,633.90. All the 10 shares in the index were trading lower.

Select private sector banking shares were also facing selling pressure.

On the flipside, metal, state-run lenders, consumer durables, pharma and FMCG shares were witnessing buying interest.

Broader markets were outperforming their larger peers as NIFTY Midcap 100 index gained 0.45% and NIFTY Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.5%.

Among the individual shares, Netweb Technologies jumped as much as 4.33% to hit an intraday high of ₹3,233 after the company informed exchanges that it has launched AI Supercomputing Systems powered by NVIDIA sovereign AI development.

The company world’s most powerful AI infrastructure solutions AI Supercomputer Tyrone Camarero GB200 System and the petascale personal computer system Tyrone Camarero Spark.

Tata Steel was top gainer in the NIFTY50 index, the stock rose nearly 2% to ₹207. Hindalco, JSW Steel, Bharat Electronics, Bajaj Auto, Jio Financial Services, Bajaj Finserv and Shriram Finance also rose between 0.6%-1.8%.

On the flipside, Infosys, Kwality Walls, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Adani Ports, HCL Technologies, Adani Enterprises and ONGC were top losers in the NIFTY50 index.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,876 shares were advancing while 786 were declining on the NSE.