The domestic stock markets swung between gains and losses in Tuesday's session after the US said it was likely to go ahead with a tariff hike on Chinese goods. Investors are also cautious ahead of the expiry of futures and options (F&O) contracts on Thursday and the release of the gross domestic product data for the September quarter on Friday. At 12:31 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex traded at 35,317.55, with a loss of 36.53 points or 0.10 per cent while the Nifty50 index of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was at 10,619.10, down 9.50 points or 0.09 per cent.
Twenty six out of 50 Nifty stocks traded in the red led by losses in metal and pharma stocks. Nifty Metal - the index of metal stocks - and Nifty Pharma - the index of pharma stocks - lost 2.34 per cent and 1.27 per cent respectively.
Losing between 2.30 per cent and 5.30 per cent, Sun Pharma, JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto were the top drags in the Nifty pack.
"Market stays in a tight range, investors wouldn't feel comfortable about results of the past quarter given the volatility of the earnings," news agency Reuters reported Deven Choksey, founder, KR Choksey Investment Managers, as saying.
"Volatility increased in the F&O market yesterday and that's a cause for worry. Volatility is significantly increasing in the monthly settlement along with the open interest," he added.
However, technical experts spotted a buying opportunity. "As depicted in the lower time frame chart - mainly on the hourly chart - the RSI (Relative Strength Index) had posted a hidden divergence wherein RSI is making a lower low but price chart is not making a lower low. This indicates a buying opportunity. The intermediate support is placed near the 10,500 mark," said Dyaneshwar Padwal, AVP Technical Analyst, KIFS Trade Capital. RSI is a technical indicator used in stock markets to measure the speed and change of movements.
In global markets, Asian share markets were generally muted but Japan's Nikkei managed to add 0.8 per cent and Chinese blue-chips rose 0.4 per cent.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dithered either side of flat and was last up 0.2 per cent.
In commodity markets, oil prices laboured with record production by Saudi Arabia. US crude was off 9 cents at $51.54 a barrel, while Brent futures inched up 3 cents to $60.51.
On Monday, foreign portfolio investors and domestic institutional investors bought net equities worth Rs 62.74 crore and Rs 351.78 crore respectively, showed provisional NSE data. In the last session, the Sensex had closed at 35,354.08 and the Nifty at 10,628.60.
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