Sept 30 (Reuters) – Indian shares were marginally up on Wednesday after a two-day selloff from persistent foreign selling and elevated oil prices.
Brent crude futures were up 0.5% to $103.1 a barrel after US President Donald Trump denied he would be willing to ease sanctions on Iran.
The Nifty 50 (.NSEI), was up 0.2% at 22,762, while the BSE Sensex (.BSESN), added 0.46% to 72,877.11 as of 10:21 a.m. IST. The indexes fell about 1.8% each in the last two sessions and are down about 5.5% in September.”The market is attempting to stabilise after the recent decline, supported by buying emerging around the 22,650 levels,” said Hitesh Tailor, technical research analyst at Choice Broking.
The near-term structure has improved towards range-bound trading to mildly bullish, he said, but added that persistent foreign investor selling remained a concern and could restrict the recovery.
Foreign investors sold shares worth 99.8 billion rupees ($1.04 billion) on a net basis on Tuesday, marking their biggest outflow in about four months. They have offloaded $2.7 billion of worth shares in September, taking the year-to-date selling to $26.75 billion.Thirteen of the 16 major sectors advanced on the day. The broader small-caps (.NIFSMCP100), and mid-caps (.NIFMDCP100),added 0.6% each.
Nifty IT index (.NIFTYIT), rose 2.6% and looked to snap an eight-session losing streak, after dovish comments from a Federal Reserve official lowered bets of a US rate hike.
Higher US rates are likely to curb client spending for IT firms, which generate a significant share of their revenue from the US.
Heavyweights ICICI Bank (ICBK.NS),and Reliance Industries (RELI.NS), gained 2% and 1% respectively, while HDFC Bank (HDBK.NS), fell 1.2%.
Among stocks, engineering firm Power Mech Projects (POMP.NS), gained 2% after winning order worth $57.2 million.
Molbio Diagnostics (MOLB.NS), jumped 4.3% after Jefferies initiated coverage of the med-tech company at “buy” at a price target of 1,600 rupees, implying an upside of 27%.
Reporting by Vivek Kumar M and Bharath Rajeswaran; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Janane Venkatraman
