Sensex, Nifty Snap 4-Day Winning Streak; Smallcap Stocks Outperform

Thu, 22 Oct Closing | Yash Vora, TM Team

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Indian share markets witnessed negative trading activity throughout the day today and ended marginally lower.

Benchmark indices snapped their four-day winning streak led by losses in index heavyweights Reliance Industries, Infosys, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood lower by 149 points. Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty ended down by 41 points.

Hero MotoCorp was the top loser in NSE. Meanwhile, the top gainers in NSE today include NTPC and Tata Motors.

SGX Nifty was trading at 11,900, down by 29 points, at the time of writing.

The BSE Mid Cap index ended up by 0.5%. The BSE Small Cap index ended up by 0.9%.

On the sectoral front, IT stocks and banking stocks witnessed selling pressure. Telecom stocks, on the other hand, witnessed buying interest.

Asian stock markets ended on a mixed note. As of the most recent closing prices, the Hang Seng ended up by 0.1% and the Shanghai Composite stood lower by 0.4%. The Nikkei ended down by 0.7%.

US stock futures are trading lower today. Nasdaq Futures are trading down by 43 points (down 0.3%), while Dow Futures are trading down by 92 points (down 0.3%).

The rupee is trading at 73.53 against the US$.

Gold prices are trading down by 0.4% at Rs 51,106 per 10 grams.

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Speaking of stock markets, the stock of ITC is a hot potato these days. There are investors who are unhappy with the company's management and wants them to pull up their socks. And then there are investors who believe that we need to be patient and that the company is on the right track.

What should investors do in light of these differences and how HUL's performance in the past could hold the key to ITC's future?

Rahul Shah answers these questions and more in his latest video.

Tune in here to know more:

In news from the pharma sector, Aurobindo Pharma was among the top buzzing stocks today.

Shares of the company slipped 6% today after its arm received a warning letter from the US health regulator for its oral solid manufacturing facility situated at Dayton, New Jersey.

"The AuroLife Pharma LLC, a wholly owned stepdown subsidiary of the Company, has received a warning letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for its oral solid manufacturing facility situated at Dayton, New Jersey," Aurobindo Pharma said in exchange filing.

Aurobindo Pharma said that its existing business from this facility will not be impacted. The exclusive sales from this facility are around 2% of the group turnover.

The company further added that it would engage with the regulator and are fully committed in resolving this issue at the earliest.

In other news, pharma major Dr Reddy's Laboratories has shut down all its production facilities across the world after a data breach was reported in its servers.

This comes just days after the pharma major received the approval from the Drugs Controller General of India to conduct the phase 2/3 trials of the Russian vaccine in India.

The company in a statement to the stock exchanges said it has isolated all data centre services in wake of the cyber-attack.

Note that the cyber-attack on Dr Reddy's Lab is second such attack on a pharma company in the past two months. In September, Chinese hackers reportedly stole data from Spanish labs working on coronavirus vaccine.

Dr Reddy's Lab share price ended the day down by 0.2%.

Here's an interesting data on Dr. Reddy's Lab, investing just Rs 100,000 in Dr. Reddy's Labs in 1992, it would have given a whopping Rs 4.89 crores in 2014!

Co-head of Research, Tanushree Banerjee believes, the opportunities in the Rebirth of India are not only more profitable than the ones in 1991 but the gains could come faster too.

In news from the IT sector, as per an article in a leading financial daily, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is in advanced talks to acquire a technology services unit of Deutsche Bank AG.

Reportedly, negotiations are ongoing and could still be delayed or fall apart.

In 2008, TCS paid US$ 505 million to acquire Citigroup Inc.'s back-office unit in what was then its biggest acquisition.

TCS share price ended the day down by 0.1%.

Moving on, in latest developments from the IPO space, the Rs 5.2 billion initial public offer of Equitas Small Finance Bank was subscribed 1.9 times today, the final day of bidding.

At the time of writing, the offer received bids for 217 million equity shares against offer size of 115.8 million equity shares.

The offer size excluded anchor book, through which company had raised Rs 1.4 billion on October 19. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, SBI Life Insurance, Franklin India Smaller Companies Fund, Mirae Asset Large Cap Fund and HDFC Life Insurance Company are among the anchor investors.

The portion set aside for qualified institutional investors has been subscribed 3.9 times, and that of non-institutional investors 15% and retail investors 2 times, at the time of writing.

This is the third public issue in small finance bank segment after AU Small Finance Bank and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank.

The public issue consists of a fresh issue of Rs 2.8 billion and an offer for sale of 72 million equity shares by Equitas Holdings to comply with shareholding norms set by the Reserve Bank of India.

The issue price has been fixed at Rs 32-33 per share.

How this IPO sails through remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we will keep you updated on the latest developments from this space. Stay tuned.

Speaking of IPOs, in one of his videos, Vijay Bhambwani shares his thoughts on the recent spate of IPOs and what it means for the market.

You can check the same here: My View on the IPO Market

To know what's moving the Indian stock markets today, check out the most recent share market updates here.

For information on how to pick stocks that have the potential to deliver big returns, download our special report now!

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