After a three-day strong rally, the Indian stock market cooled off slightly in Thursday’s session, with key indices remaining largely unchanged as traders awaited election results in the politically significant northern state of Bihar, which could have implications for government policy.
Although the markets opened in the red, they quickly reversed losses in the first half of the session. However, those gains were pared as the day progressed, causing the Nifty 50 to close 0.02% lower at 25,577 points, while the S&P BSE Sensex settled with a mild cut of 0.01% at 84,447.
Sector-wise, Nifty Metal emerged as the top performer, gaining 0.33%, followed by Nifty Pharma and Nifty Realty, gaining 0.30% and 0.26% respectively. On the downside, Nifty PSU Bank emerged as the top laggard, dropping 0.78%, while Nifty IT, Nifty FMCG, Nifty Media and Nifty Auto, all fell between 0.30% and 0.60%.
Meanwhile, most Asian markets closed with healthy gains after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a funding bill into law, effectively ending the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.
As the U.S. government reopened, key economic data such as jobs and inflation figures—crucial indicators for assessing the health of the U.S. economy, were set to be released.
On the domestic front, October CPI inflation eased to 0.25%, reinforcing expectations of at least one more repo rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India in the upcoming monetary policy review.
(more to come)