Sensex Opening Bell: Stock market flat after weak start; Sensex up 80 points, Nifty below 24800

New Delhi| After six consecutive days of decline, the domestic stock market was seen trading with ups and downs on Tuesday. After a sluggish start, the Sensex rose by 304.83 (0.37%) points to reach the level of 81,352.40 at 9.11 am. Nifty, on the other hand, appeared to trade at 24,887.00 with a gain of 91.25 (0.37%) points. Selling pressure continued in Indian stock markets on Tuesday after a negative trend in Asian markets. For this reason, the market showed ups and downs in early trading.

Earlier, Nifty and Sensex made a mixed start. In this, the Nifty 50 index opened at 24,832.20 points with a slight gain of 36 points or 0.15 percent. At the same time, the Sensex index opened at 80,826.56 points, down 223.44 points or 0.28 percent.

VK Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist, Geojit Financial Services, said the market remained weak due to negative signals from rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, large-scale FPI sales and concerns over today’s election results. The most important trigger that pulled Nifty 5.6 per cent below the peak was continued large FPI sales during the last six trading days

In the sectoral index, Nifty Private Bank led the gains in the early session with a rise of 0.55 per cent and Nifty Bank also gained 0.5 per cent, while Nifty FMCG, Nifty Media and Nifty Metal were under selling pressure. Of the Nifty 50 stocks, 20 opened with gains, 26 with falls and 4 remained unchanged.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have sold equities worth Rs 50,011 crore during the last six trading sessions, offset by purchases of Rs 53,203 crore by domestic institutional investors (DIIs). Despite this, the market fell by 5.6 percent due to weak sentiment.

Experts also said there are enough indicators to suggest that FPIs are following the ‘sell India, buy China’ strategy. Higher valuations in India and cheaper valuations for Chinese stocks have accelerated this shift in FPI strategy.

“On Monday, the Nifty index closed at a critical support level of 24,800, with momentum indicators in the oversold zone, which could lead to a temporary surge”, said Varun Agarwal, MD, Profit Idea. Weekly closures below 24,800, however, could lead to further declines, possibly as high as 24,000″

There was also heavy selling pressure in other Asian markets on Tuesday, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index falling more than 7.5 percent at the time of this report. Japan’s Nikkei index fell 1.21 percent, while Taiwan’s weighted index fell 0.76 percent.