Sensex slips 183 points in choppy trade; Nifty below 15,700; TCS dips 1.5%

Indian Equities declined in-line with Asian peers on Friday as rapidly spreading Delta variant of Covid-19 in the region fanned fears of a stalled growth. That apart, Washington’s call to add at least 10 Chinese entities to its economic blacklist over alleged human rights abuses and high-tech surveillance in Xinjiang pulled benchmarks in Japan, South Korea, and China down by up to 1 per cent.

Back home, the S&P BSE Sensex dropped 183 points, or 0.35 per cent, to settle at 52,386 levels while NSE’s 50-share benchmark declined 38 points, or 0.24 per cent, to close at 15,690 levels. Heavyweights, TCS, HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, Axis Bank, Kotak Bank, and HDFC were the top laggards along with Wipro, Bajaj Auto, and M&M.

The broader markets, on the flipside, settled about half a per cent higher. Sectorally, the Nifty Private Bank index was the biggest drag, down 0.6 per cent. On the upside, the Nifty Realty index zoomed 2.4 per cent.

Shares of Macrotech Developers, the recently listed real estate company, surged 10 per cent to Rs 754 on the BSE in the intra-day trade on Friday, having rallied 14 per cent in two days, after the company released operational performance for the quarter ended June 2021 (Q1FY22).

Shares of Bajaj Steel Industries hit a new high of Rs 1,432, ralling 10 per cent on the BSE in the intra-day trade on Friday, in an otherwise weak market. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 0.36 per cent at 52,433 points at 10:18 am. Bajaj Steel is engaged in the manufacture and sale of machinery for cotton ginning and pressing, used for preparing textile fabrics in India and abroad. It is the only company in the world that produces machineries for all cotton ginning technologies.

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