Banks, Metals Drag Sensex By 53 Pts

The Dalal Street remained muted on Tuesday, June 8 as the benchmarks closed marginally lower led by a selloff in Banking and Metal stocks. However, piling up was witnessed in IT and Telecom stocks in the intraday session which countered the losses to be minimal.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 52.94 points at 52,275.57 with 16 declines and 14 advances in the day's trade on Tuesday. Shares of HDFC Twins, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and SBI slipped over a per cent each and contributed the most in the drag.

 Similarly, the Nifty-50 index closed lower by 11.55 points at 15,740.10.

Amid volatility in the benchmarks, the broader markets outperformed in the day's trade as both the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices added close to a per cent each in the day's trade. Shares of Fairchem org. surged 20 per cent and marked a record high of Rs 1,119.45 post the company reported strong Q4 results on June 7.

 "Today's trade clearly belonged to the midcap bulls as we saw both high-quality midcaps across sectors together with smallcaps rallying on sustained buying interest. Advance-declines too was encouraging today with buying seen across a wide array of stocks," said S Ranganathan of LKP Securities.

Among the sectors, Banks, Metals, and Financials ended in the losers' territory, while all other sectors witnessed some buying interest. The IT sector gained the most in the day's trade as the sector gained over a per cent led by shares of COFORGE LTD., L&T Infotech, and Tech Mahindra as they advanced over two per cent each.

Moving ahead, investors await key US inflation data due on Thursday for more indications about the Fed's policy outlook and cues about the global economic recovery. The coronavirus infection rate in the region is also keeping the underlying mood cautious, said experts.

In the overall market breadth, 946 shares closed with gains, while 821 shares witnessed selling. (NSE)