By Siddhant Mishra
Equities witnessed volatile trade on Thursday, starting off on a strong note and shedding early gains on account of the commentary from the Fed, which continues to maintain its hawkish stance despite agreeing to lower the pace of rate hikes.
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Financials and IT stocks were the major laggards, with Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv plunging 7.23% and 5.24%, respectively, in the Nifty universe. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank and Axis Bank closed in the red, as did Infosys, TCS and Tech Mahindra.
Cipla was the top gainer, up 2.17%, while HUL, Britannia, Tata Consumer and ITC ended in the green.
FMCG stocks got a leg-up thanks to the strong commentary by Godrej Consumer, which expects to deliver a double-digit sales growth, backed by a low single-digit volume growth, despite the demand softness.
The company said there has been sequential improvement from high single-digit sales growth and mid single-digit volume decline in the previous quarter. It described the growth as broad-based and attributed it to the double-digit sales growth in both home care and personal care. It is also expecting strong showing in international operations.
Godrej Consumer gained over 3% on the NSE, while Marico was up 1.75%.
“Financials, led by the Bajaj twins, dragged the indices down. There is a shift being seen towards midcaps and smallcaps because ETFs have been sellers in the frontline stocks. The negative sentiment around IT stocks is due to global fear mongering, but fundamentally there’s nothing wrong,” said Deven Choksey, managing director of KRChoksey group.
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ITC, HUL, Nestle closed in the green among Sensex stocks, gaining between 1.15% and 1.91%, while the Bajaj twins were the heaviest losers. Banking stocks, too, ended in the red, while index heavyweight Reliance Industries was down 0.18%.
A total of 1,618 stocks advanced on the BSE and 1,861 stocks declined.
Among sectoral indices, financial services and teck closed in the red, while oil & gas, FMCG, energy, metals and auto indices gained over 1%.
Both DIIs and FIIs were net sellers, pumping out ₹194.09 crore and ₹1,449.45 crore, respectively.