Markets snapped three-day winning streak; Sensex closes below 60,000 & Nifty fell 107 points

Key equity indices witnessed profit booking but recovered from the intraday lows on Tuesday, September 28, 2021, but ended with steep losses. The headline indices, Sensex and Nifty snapped their three-day rising streak amid negative global cues and profit taking.

The S&P BSE Sensex declined 410.28 points or 0.68 per cent to close at 59,667.60. The Nifty 50 index ended 106.50 points or 0.60 per cent lower at 17,748.60. The Nifty Bank fell 226.25 points or 0.59 per cent to 37,946.

In tandem with the benchmarks, the broader markets also declined with the S&P BSE MidCap index declining 0.71 per cent and the S&P BSE SmallCap losing 0.62 per cent.

The market breadth was negative. On the BSE, 1512 shares rose and 1743 shares fell. On the Nifty 50 in the NSE, 18 shares advanced and 32 shares declined. The top five gainers on Nifty 50 were Power Grid (up 4.43 per cent), Coal India (up 4.22 per cent), NTPC (up 3.74 per cent), Sun Pharma (up 3.60 per cent) and IOC (up 3.54 per cent). The top five losers were Bharti Airtel (down 3.70 per cent), Tech Mahindra (down 3.52 per cent), Bajaj Finance (down 3.33 per cent), Divi's Laboratories (down 2.81 per cent) and Bajaj Finserv (down 2.75 per cent).

COVID-19 Update

Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide were at 232,316,272 with 4,756,251 deaths. India reported 292,206 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 447,373 deaths, data showed.

Economy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today dedicated 35 crop varieties with special traits to the nation through video conferencing. In a pan-India programme organized at all. Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Institutes, State and Central Agricultural Universities and Krishi Vigyan Kendra, he also dedicated to the nation the newly constructed campus of the National Institute of Biotic Stress Tolerance in Raipur. The Institute has been established to take up the basic and strategic research in biotic stresses, develop human resources and provide policy support.

China is in the grip of a power crunch as a shortage of coal supplies, toughening emissions standards and strong demand from manufacturers and industry have pushed coal prices to record highs and triggered widespread curbs on usage.

In the German election on Tuesday the vote on Sunday resulted in more uncertainty for the country. The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) gained the largest share of the vote with 25.7 per cent by a slim margin, with Angela Merkel's right-leaning bloc of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union gaining 24.1 per cent of the vote. On the data front, German consumer morale for October has brightened unexpectedly, according to the GfK institute's consumer sentiment index, published on Tuesday. The survey of around 2,000 Germans climbed to 0.3 points from a revised -1.1 points for September.

Europe's biggest welfare experiment of modern times is starting to look vindicated. The region's defining crisis response, of supporting people in jobs even when they are not working due to the pandemic, has stood the test of 19 months of an unprecedented emergency.