With healthy earnings by blue-chips and non-stop buying by foreign institutional investors as well as domestic institutions, NSE benchmark Nifty on Tuesday made history for a moment by breaching the 10,000-mark for the first time, but BSE benchmark Sensex lost from its life high after investors went on for profit booking and ended in red at the close.
Hitting an all-time high of 10,011.30 at the outset, the momentary celebration at Dalal Street was short-lived as the Nifty closed with a negative bias a wave of profit-booking dragged the gauge down by 1.85 points, or 0.02 per cent, to settle at 9,964.55.
However market insiders said that steady monsoon progress and smooth GST take-off had helped both the key indices scale historic highs. The Sensex climbed to a fresh life high of 32,374.30 before closing down 17.60 points, or 0.05 per cent, at 32,228.27. In the last two trading sessions, the key barometer had gained 341.47 points.
“Market made a historical day by touching 10k supported by better earnings from blue-chips and strong liquidity. However, profit booking at higher levels pulled the market to mild correction due to psychological effect, muted Q1 results for midcaps and awaiting Fed monetary policy meet,” said Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services.
Participants also looked up to US Federal Reserve policy meeting later. Key indices in the Asian region lay low. Major losers include lupin 1.96 per cent, along with Tata Motors, Coal India and Sun Pharma.
Asian Paints fell 0.35 per cent after the company today reported 20.23 per cent decline in consolidated net profit for the first quarter ended June. Bharti Airtel surged 1.76 per cent after reports of the Government considering giving telecom companies more time to pay for the spectrum they bought, in a bid to ease sectoral stress.
Axis Bank too rose 1.94 per cent, TCS up 1.50 per cent and Tata Steel 1.03 per cent. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought shares worth Rs 668.87 crore while foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares to the tune of Rs 366.84 crore yesterday, showed provisional data.
The capital goods index fell the most. Auto, healthcare and FMCG too weighed. Sectoral indices such as metal, realty and banking finished higher. Broader markets -- the midcap and smallcap indices -- outperformed.