Stock Market Opened flat, Pressure on IT stocks

Mumbai (The Uttam Hindu): Indian stock market opened flat on Monday's trading session. At 9:45 am, Sensex was up 9 points at 81,767 and Nifty was up 10 points at 24,977.

In early trade, there was selling pressure in IT stocks due to weak quarterly results. Apart from this, Auto, PSU Bank, Pharma, FMCG, Realty, Media, Energy, Infra, Commodity and PSE index were also trading in the red. At the same time, Private Bank, Media and Service index were in the green.

Midcap and smallcap stocks also witnessed marginal selling. The Nifty Midcap 100 index was down 87 points, or 0.15 per cent, at 59,017, and the Nifty Smallcap 100 index was down 65 points, or 0.36 per cent, at 18,892.

Nifty Bank was trading higher and was at 56,492, up 209 points or 0.37 per cent.

Axis Bank, Reliance Industries, Infosys, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra, TCS, Sun Pharma, Titan, M&M, HUL, Asian Paints, NTPC, Tata Motors and BEL were the top losers in the Sensex pack. Tata Steel, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Eternal, UltraTech Cement, Bajaj Finance and Trent were the top gainers.

Dr. V.K. Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Ltd, said, "The most important factor that the market will focus on in the coming days will be the outcome of the trade talks between the US and India. If an interim trade agreement is reached between the two countries with tariff rates below 20 per cent on India, it will be positive from the market perspective."

Most Asian markets were trading with gains. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Bangkok and Jakarta were in the green. While Tokyo was trading in the red. US markets closed with a mixed trend. The main index Dow Jones was down 0.32 percent and Nasdaq was up 0.05 percent.

On the institutional front, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) turned net buyers on July 18 with purchases worth Rs 374.74 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) made net purchases of Rs 2,103.51 crore.