Markets closed flat on F&O Expiry; Sensex gains 5 points & Nifty closes at 16,640

Domestic equity barometers ended flat with some positive bias on Thursday, August 26, 2021, the day of the F&O Series expiry. The S&P BSE Sensex rose 4.89 points or 0.01 per cent to 55,949.10. The Nifty 50 index added 2.25 points or 0.01 per cent to 16,636.90. The Nifty 50 index gained 31.30 points or 0.09 per cent to close at 35,617.55.

The broader markets continued to underperform the Sensex with S&P BSE MidCap rose 0.30 per cent and S&P BSE SmallCap settling 0.31 per cent up.

Sectorally, the metals pack dropped the most, down 1.27 per cent, followed by the Nifty Media down 1.17 per cent, Public Sector Bank Index down 0.81 per cent). On the upside, the Nifty Oil & Gas index rose 0.82 per cent and the Nifty FMCG index rose 0.58 per cent.

The market breadth was positive. On the BSE, 1738 shares rose and 1447 shares fell. On the Nifty 50 index at the NSE, 22 shares rose and 28 shares fell. The top five gainers on Nifty were Britannia (up 2.67 per cent), Tata Consumers (up 2.21 per cent), BPCL (up 1.77 per cent), HDFC Life (up 1.73 per cent) and Reliance (up 1.33 per cent). The top five losers were Bharti Airtel down 4.42 per cent), JSW Steel (down 1.77 per cent), Maruti Suzuki (down 1.51 per cent), SBI (down 1.42 per cent) and Hindalco (down 1.42 per cent).

COVID-19 Update

Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide were at 213,866,744 with 4,463,127 global deaths. India reported 333,725 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 436,365 deaths, data showed.

Economy

The Reserve Bank of India has permitted authorised card networks to offer card tokenisation services to any token requestor in a bid to make card transactions more safe, secure and convenient for the users. In a notification issued yesterday, RBI said that it has provided the facility to interested cardholders only for their mobile phones and tablets.

The central bank noticed that there has been an uptake in the volume of tokenised card transactions during the recent months and on a review of the framework and keeping in view stakeholders' feedback, RBI decided to extend the scope of tokenisation to include consumer devices – laptops, desktops, wearables (wristwatches, bands, etc.) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

South Korea's central bank raised its policy rate on Thursday, becoming the first major Asian economy to do so in the pandemic amid concerns record-low monetary settings are overheating demand. The Bank of Korea's monetary policy board raised the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.75 per cent.

Japan saw the prices companies charge each other for services rise 1.1 per cent in July from a year earlier, marking the fifth straight month of increase, Bank of Japan data showed on Thursday. The increase in the services producer price index was smaller than a revised 1.3 per cent gain marked in June, the data showed.