Indian equity benchmark -- Nifty -- ended Tuesday’s trading session in a negative terrain with minor losses, ahead of a market holiday on Wednesday for Christmas and December F&O expiry. Soon after making a cautious start, index turned positive and extended its gains to touch day’s high point, as some support came after retail inflation for farm workers and rural labourers dipped to 5.35 per cent and 5.47 per cent in November compared to 5.96 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively, in October this year. Traders took note of Saurabh Garg, secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s statement that India needs to leverage data and make data-driven decisions if it wants to achieve a higher rate of growth. Further, markets traded higher till afternoon session.
In afternoon session, index came off from day’s high point, but remained trade in green, as sentiments were upbeat with the Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed a $500 million (about Rs 4,250 crore) loan to support green and sustainable infrastructure projects aligned with the country's climate commitments. Besides, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s statement that the Centre and state governments are working on a new scheme to help farmers transport the farm produce to other states and markets. He added the contribution of the farm sector to the country's GDP is 18 per cent, and the government is working on many areas to further strengthen the sector. In last leg of trade, index cut all gains to end below its neutral line.
Most of the sectorial indices ended in red except Auto, FMCG and Oil & Gas stocks. The top gainers from the F&O segment were RBL Bank, Biocon and Interglobe Aviation. On the other hand, the top losers were Macrotech Developers, PB Fintech and Siemens. In the index option segment, maximum OI continues to be seen in the 23900 - 24100 calls and 23400 - 23600 puts indicating this is the trading range expectation.