Sensex Falls Over 250 Points, Nifty Below 14,350 Dragged By Banks

The Indian equity benchmarks fell on Friday dragged by losses in banking, auto and financial services shares. The Sensex fell as much 316 points and Nifty 50 index touched an intraday low of 14,319.05. 

Meanwhile, a key gauge of Asian shares rose on Friday, supported by gains in China and a decision by the European Central Bank to maintain stimulus, while investors largely shrugged off the impact of a possible U.S. capital gains tax hike.

As of 9:23 am, Sensex fell 81 points to 47,999 and Nifty declined 12 points to 14,393.

"The Nifty has formed a bullish piercing pattern by closing above the median of the previous day, which was at 14,367 levels that can be found at the end of a downtrend. Based on it, our strategy should be to create long positions with between 14,350 and 14,300 levels. On the higher side, we would see the levels of 14,530 and 14,580. A close above the levels of 14,580 would validate the formation of bullish reversal and in that case, the Nifty may rally to even 14,850 levels where it has the biggest hurdle. On the other side, 14,250 and 14,150 would be major supports," Shrikant Chouhan, executive vice president, equity technical research at Kotak Securities said in a statement.

He advises keeping a final stop loss at 14,150 for creating any long position and focus should be on financials and metal stocks.

Nine of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading lower led by the Nifty Bank Index's 1 per cent decline. Nifty Auto, Financial Services, PSU Bank and Private Bank indices also fell nearly 1 per cent.

On the other hand, metal and pharms shares were witnessing buying interest.

Mid- and small-cap shares were largely flat as Nifty Midcap 100 index fell 0.05 per cent while Nifty Smallcap 100 index rose 0.11 per cent.

Power Grid was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 3.83 per cent to ₹ 211. SBI Life, Tata Steel, Asian Paints, Grasim Industries, JSW Steel, Tata Consumer Products, Hindalco, HDFC Life, dr Reddy's Labs, HCL Technologies and Titan also fell between 1-2.5 per cent,

On the flipside, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance, Maruti Suzuki, HDFC Bank, Hindustan Unilever, HDFC, Nestle India, State Bank of India, UPL, Britannia Industries, Wipro, TCS, Infosys and Eicher Motors were among the laggards.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,241 shares were advancing while 708 were declining on the BSE.