Stock Markets Surrender Intraday Gains And Decline for A Third Day

Equity benchmark indices lost intraday gains and closed lower on Thursday, dragged down by market heavyweights ITC and State Bank of India after their fourth-quarter reports disappointed investors.

The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 128.90 points or 0.21 percent to close at 61,431.74 after trading in the green for the most part of the day. It reached a high of 61,955.90 and a low of 61,349.34 during the day.

The NSE Nifty dropped 51.80 points or 0.28 percent to 18,129.95.

Among the Sensex companies, the top laggards were ITC, SBI, Titan, Power Grid, Larsen & Toubro, Tata Motors, Hindustan Unilever, and UltraTech Cement.

ITC shares declined 2 percent despite the business reporting a 22.66 percent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 5,225.02 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 2023.

SBI slipped 1.77 percent despite the country’s largest bank reporting an 83 percent jump in net profit at Rs 16,694.51 crore for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2022-23 due to greater interest revenue and low provisioning.

Among the top gainers were Bajaj Finance, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Asian Paints, HCL Technologies, HDFC, and HDFC Bank.

In Asia, the markets in Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong all concluded in the green.

European stocks were also trading higher. On Wednesday, the US market concluded with significant gains.

On Wednesday, an upbeat US President Joe Biden claimed that he is confident the US would avoid an unprecedented and perhaps catastrophic debt default, citing fruitful talks with congressional Republicans.

Also read: Share Markets Rebound After Two-Day Drop Amid A Rally In Global Equities