D-Street snaps 4-day rally on profit booking

Mumbai: India's broadest equity gauges Monday snapped a four-day winning streak to retreat from within 3% of life-time peaks, as investors looked beyond positive global cues and renewed foreign fund inflows to book profits in the absence of an express local trigger.

The BSE Sensex fell 452.4 points, or 0.54%, to close at 83,606, while the NSE Nifty-50 shed 120.7 points, or 0.47%, to end at 25,517. The two indices had risen 2.7% over the past four sessions and posted gains of 3.1% and 2.7%, respectively, in June, marking their fourth straight month of advances.

Profit-booking and weakness in select sectors weighed on sentiment, even though markets had rallied sharply last week on the back of robust global signals and domestic institutional buying.

"Last week, markets surged sharply driven by robust global signals and buying from domestic institutions, but profit-booking emerged, dragging down the benchmark indices," said Prashanth Tapse, senior VP (research), Mehta Equities.

The broader market outperformed, with the Nifty Midcap 150 rising 0.6% and the Nifty Smallcap 250 gaining 0.8%. On BSE, out of 4,290 stocks traded, 2,362 advanced while 1,750 declined.

India VIX, which gauges volatility, climbed 3.20% to 12.79.

In other Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei gained 0.8%, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.8%.

Among sectors, auto and financial stocks dragged the benchmarks lower. The Nifty Auto index slipped 0.5%, while Nifty Financial Services fell 0.3%. Meanwhile, Nifty PSU banks, consumer durables and pharma were the top gainers.

Within the stocks, top gainers on the Nifty included Trent, BEL, SBI, IndusInd Bank and Jio Financial Services. Tata Consumer Products and Kotak Mahindra Bank were among the major laggards.

Tapse noted that trade negotiations with the US will remain a key focus in the near term. "The focus will be on tariff settlement with the US government, as the deadline is approaching and India has yet to conclude the agreement, which could create uncertainty among the investors."

Shrikant Chouhan, head of equity research at Kotak Securities, believes that 25,470/83,500 will act as a key level to watch. Below 25,470/83,500, the markets could see a further correction toward 25,375-25,300/83,200-83,000.

"On the flip side, a sustained move above 25,470/83,500 could push the market up to 25,600/83,900. Further upside may also continue, potentially lifting the market to 25,700/84,200."

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) net sold shares worth ₹831.5 crore on Monday, BSE data showed. However, for the whole month of June, their total investment came to ₹7,489 crore. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought shares worth ₹3,497 crore on Monday, taking their total investment for June to ₹72,676 crore.