Investors turn cautious ahead of US Fed meet

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• BSE Sensex declined 283.60 pts or 0.44% to 63,591.33

• During the day, Sensex fell 324.47 pts or 0.50% to 63,550.46

• Nifty went down by 90.45 pts or 0.47% to 18,989.15

• Asian Paints, Tata Steel, HCL Tech, Nestle, Maruti, JSW Steel, NTPC and L&T were major laggards

• Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finserv, RIL, SBI, and Airtel were gainers

• FIIs offloaded equities worth Rs1,816.91 cr

Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty declined for the second day in a row on Wednesday amid unabated foreign fund outflows. Investors preferred to remain on the sidelines ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision, traders said.

The 30-share BSE Sensex declined 283.60 points or 0.44 per cent to settle at 63,591.33. During the day, it fell 324.47 points or 0.50 per cent to 63,550.46. The Nifty went down by 90.45 points or 0.47 to 18,989.15.

“FIIs offloading shares in the domestic market continues to hurt sentiment while strong US growth indicators indicate that interest rates may stay elevated going ahead. Investors sentiment was also primarily clouded by lingering concerns about corporate India’s Q2 earnings which as of now is uninspiring,” said Prashanth Tapse, senior V-P (research), Mehta Equities Ltd. “The domestic indices were responding to the global signals ahead of the Fed’s monetary policy decision later in the day, while the global market was also assimilating to the mixed bag of US corporate earnings reports. Markets anticipate a status quo in the Fed policy, however, sustenance of the high rate for a prolonged period is the issue. Ease in demand, as reflected by October PMI data, led to more cautiousness in India compared to Asian and European peers. However, good H1 gross tax collection and in-line expectation monthly volume demand by the auto sector, resulted in a minimal negative effect,” said Vinod Nair, head (research) at Geojit Financial Services.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth Rs 1,816.91 crore on Wednesday, according to exchange data.

In the BSE midcap gauge declined 0.35 per cent and smallcap index dipped 0.10 per cent. Among the indices, metal fell 1.45 per cent, power declined 1.19 per cent, commodities (1.18 per cent), services (1.15 per cent), utilities (1.13 per cent), IT (0.75 per cent), teck (0.63 per cent) and capital goods (0.59 per cent). Telecommunication, oil & gas and realty were the gainers.

Among the Sensex firms, Asian Paints, Tata Steel, HCL Technologies, Nestle, Maruti, JSW Steel, NTPC and Larsen & Toubro were the major laggards. Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finserv, Reliance Industries, State Bank of India and Bharti Airtel were the gainers.