Closing Bell: Market halts budget rally; Nifty holds 17500

Domestic equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty halted their three-day winning streak on Thursday, reverting from the closing highs registered in the previous session, as the bulls took a breather.

The Indian market fell sharply today to halt a three-day winning rally amid selling pressure in information technology and financial names and weak global markets.

Asian share markets traded weak as Japan's Nikkei index plunged 1.06% and the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.97%. US stock futures were lower after Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc's shares tanked more than 20% in overnight post-market trade after missing earnings estimates. Thus, Indian benchmarks snapped the budget rally dragged by capital goods, realty, IT and oil & gas stocks.

At the closing bell on February 3, the Sensex was down 770.31 points or 1.29% at 58,788.02, and the Nifty was down 219.80 points or 1.24% at 17,560.20. On the market breadth, around 1663 shares have advanced, 1602 shares declined, and 81 shares are unchanged.

Top Nifty losers today were Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, Divis Labs, Maruti Suzuki and ITC, whereas top Nifty gainers included HDFC, NTPC, SBI Life Insurance, Grasim Industries and Infosys.

On a sectoral basis, except auto index, all other indices ended in the red with oil & gas, IT, realty, capital goods indices down 1-2%. In the broader market, BSE midcap index shed 0.9%, while smallcap index fell 0.4%.

On the 30-share BSE platform, HDFC, Infosys, L&T, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bajaj Finserv, Tech Mahindra, Bajaj Finance, IndusInd Bank, M&M, Wipro and Reliance Industries were the major losers.

Among the stock buzzers, shares of Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services (Mahindra Finance) fell 5.44% to Rs 159.80 after posting weak third-quarter numbers on a sequential basis.

Domestic bourses had climbed about 4% each over the last three sessions with the Union Budget 2022-23 presentation in focus on February 1.