Stock Market closed in red; Sensex fell 91 points & Nifty slips to 17,214

Domestic equity benchmarks snapped the two-day winning run and ended with minor cuts after a volatile session on Wednesday, December 29, 2021. The S&P BSE Sensex shed 90.99 points, or 0.16 per cent, to 57,806.49. The Nifty 50 index lost 19.65 points, or 0.11 per cent, to 17,213.60. In the sectoral indices at the NSE, the Nifty Bank declined 138.40 points, or 0.39 per cent, to end at 35,045.40.

The broader markets at the BSE outperformed the Sensex with S&P BSE MidCap rising 0.13 per cent and S&P BSE SmallCap closing with a gain of 0.49 per cent.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 2043 shares rose and 1334 shares fell. On the Nifty 50 index at the NSE, 19 shares advanced and 31 shares declined. The top five gainers on Nifty were Eicher Motor (up 3.41 per cent), Bajaj Auto (up 2.93 per cent), Sun Pharmaceuticals (up 2.33 per cent), Divi's Laboratories (up 2.05 per cent) and IndusInd Bank (up 1.71 per cent). The top five losers were State Bank of India (down 1.73 per cent), ITC (down 1.57 per cent), Coal India (down 1.51 per cent), Grasim (down 1.23 per cent) and NTPC (down 1.21 per cent).

COVID-19 Update

In the last 24 hours, India added 9,195 new Covid-19 cases taking India's active caseload to 77,002 patients. India has recorded 781 cases of the Omicron variant of Coronavirus across 21 states and UTs so far out of which 241 people have recovered or migrated. India's active caseload is currently at 77,002. Active cases account for less than 1 per cent of total cases, currently at 0.22 per cent; the lowest since March 2020. The recovery rate is currently at 98.40 per cent; the highest since March 2020.

ITR Filing

Over 4.67 crore Income Tax Returns have been filed on the new e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department as of December 27, 2021. More than 15.49 lakh ITRs were filed on Monday. This number is likely to increase further as the due date of December 31, 2021, is approaching.

Over 48.19 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance has been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities.

Over 3.91 crore returns have been verified, out of which more than 3.35 crore are through Aadhaar based OTP. In the last 3 days itself, 27.7 lakh Aadhaar OTP requests have been generated on the new e-filing portal. Taxpayers have been advised to complete e-verification at the earliest in pending cases.

Of the e-verified ITRs, more than 2.88 crore ITRs have been processed and over 1.07 crore refunds for 2021-22 have been issued.

Economy

Omicron is dealing a blow to the world economy just as the pandemic enters its third year as a drag on growth and driver of inflation. According to the latest study, the global economy is expanding just 0.7 per cent in the final three months of the year, half the pace of the previous quarter and below the rate of around 1 per cent witnessed right before the crisis.

The euro area is on pace for a 0.8 per cent expansion in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, which is 0.3 percentage points less than what was projected in November. The US has strengthened slightly and is now registering a 1.2 per cent pace. Among emerging markets, where readings are based on annualised data, China has weakened to a 4.5 per cent rate this quarter, while Brazil has slumped to 0.2 per cent.