Nifty ends down for 3rd consecutive day; metals, power dip

The Nifty closed marginally lower and continued its downtrend for the third consecutive session, ahead of expiry day for the month of October on Thursday. It slipped below the 4,800 mark during the day but managed to retrace and closed below the 4,850 level on huge volumes today as well. Weak global cues weighed on the markets for the second day.

The sell-off in shares of private banking and financial (PSU banking was also down but turned in the green in the late trade), power, metal, cement, select auto and oil & gas stocks kept the markets lower for the whole day. However, buying in realty, technology, pharma and PSU banking stocks along with heavyweights Reliance Industries and Bharti Airtel capped the losses to some extent.

The 50-share NSE Nifty closed at 4826.15, down 0.42% or 20.55 points, after hitting an intraday low of 4784.10 and the 30-share BSE Nifty declined 69.91 points or 0.43%, to settle at 16,283.49, after seeing day's low of 16,144.17. Equity benchmarks slipped 3.4% and 3.14% in three days, respectively.

Tomorrow will be the settlement day for the month of October. The F&O turnover was over Rs 1 lakh crore for the second day in a row. The Nifty Open Interest PCR was down further to 1.08, as Nifty October 4900 Put shed 23 lakh shares in open interest while Nifty October 4800 Call added 18 lakh shares in open interest. Balrampur Chini shot up 8% and its Open Interest was up 60%. Bharti Airtel has seen lower level long formation and was up 3.3%. PTC gained 8% and its Open Interest was up 20%. Everest Kanto was 16%, which saw fresh short positions.

On the global front, European markets were down 1.8% each on the back of sell-off in banking and commodities related stocks and US index futures fell 0.5%, at the time of writing this report. Asian markets ended lower. Kospi declined 2.4% and Jakarta was down 2.9%. Hang Seng, Nikkei, Straits Times and Taiwan Weighted fell 1.4-1.8% while Shanghai was up just 0.33%.

Volumes remained above the Rs 1 lakh crore mark today as well. Total traded turnover was at Rs 1,30,214.03 crore as against Rs 1.47 lakh crore on Tuesday. This included Rs 18,370.85 crore from the NSE cash segment, Rs 1,06,431.02 crore from the NSE F&O and the balance Rs 5,412.16 crore from the BSE cash segment.