The equity market was deep in the red in the afternoon session on April 22 after a sharp rally in the last two sessions. However, a total of 60 stocks hit fresh record highs during the trade. Weak global cues after the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell hinted at a 50 basis points (bps) rate hike in May weighed on investor sentiment.
All sectoral indices traded in the negative territory with the banks, financial services, metal, and pharma being the prominent losers.
The BSE Sensex fell 748 points or 1.3 percent to 57,164, while the Nifty50 plunged 236 points to 17,156 after climbing 2.5 percent in the last two sessions.
“Yesterday’s comment by the Fed chief that a 50 bps rate hike is possible in May and control of inflation has become absolutely essential’ has pushed the 10-year bond yield above 2.9 percent and consequently impacted equity markets,” said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.
But this impact, too, is likely to be temporary since the market has already discounted this known hawkishness of the Fed, Vijayakumar added.
The broader market, meanwhile, showed some outperformance compared to benchmarks. For instance, the BSE Midcap index declined half a percent while Smallcap index dropped 0.2 percent. Even the market breadth was not that worrying as about 1,843 shares declined against 1,521 advancing shares on the BSE.
Despite the negative sentiment, a total of 173 stocks hit their respective 52-week highs, of which the top 60 stocks touched record highs. This included nine stocks from the ‘A’ group, namely, Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, Angel One, Astec Lifesciences, Greenpanel Industries, Garden Reach Shipbuilders Engineers, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, Polycab India, and Sunflag Iron.
In the ‘B’ group, counters that touched record highs included Adani Wilmar, Bhagyanagar Properties, Deep Industries, Ester Industries, Ganesh Benzoplast, Genus Paper, Hardwyn India, Kranti Industries, Madras Fertilizers, Magadh Sugar Energy, Mangalore Chemicals, Vedant Fashions, and Radhika Jeweltech,
Even the number of stocks at the upper circuit was higher than the number of stocks at the lower circuit. Over 250 stocks hit the upper circuit on Friday. Golden Tobacco hit 20 percent upper circuit, while Kaushalya Infrastructure, SPS Finquest, Marathon Nextgen Realty, Dhabriya Plywood, Archidply Industries, Shree Rama Multi-Tech, and Compucom Software were locked in 10 percent upper circuit.
Hardwyn India, BPL, Ritco Logistics, Shah Alloys, Imagicaaworld, Sharika Enterprises, Shivam Auto, Hubtown, Kohinoor Foods, Dharani Sugars, Zenith Steel Pipes, Consolidated Construction Consortium, and Impex Ferro Tech were frozen at 5 percent upper circuit.
On the flip side, more than 160 stocks were locked in lower circuits on Friday. The list includes names such as Nagarjuna Fertilizers, Delta Management, Vardhman Polytex, STL Global, Ankit Metal, Veeram Securities, and Mercator, which hit 5 percent lower circuits each.
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