By Bharath Rajeswaran
BENGALURU (Reuters) -Indian shares were little changed on Tuesday, held back by bouts of profit-booking with the indexes near record-high levels and ahead of key domestic and U.S. economic data.
The blue-chip index NSE Nifty 50 was up 0.07% at 22,136.75 while the BSE Sensex added 0.01% to 72,800, as of 10:06 a.m. IST.
Since hitting record highs in every session last week, the Nifty 50 has calmed to trade within a 130-point range for the past three sessions. It was in a 70-point range in the first hour of trading on the day.
Six of the 13 major sectors logged losses. Financials, private banks dropped about 0.3% each.
“We expect the ongoing trend of consolidation and bouts of profit booking at record high levels to continue, as Indian markets are priced to perfection, in terms of valuations,” said Deven Choksey, managing director of DRChoksey Finserv.
However, favourable liquidity conditions due to sustained domestic inflows will cushion the markets against any significant corrections, Choksey added.
Domestic institutional investors have been net buyers in 14 of the 18 sessions in February, adding stocks worth $2.5 billion.
IT stocks gained 0.5%, rebounding from a 1.17% drop in the previous session, led by Tata Consultancy Services, after UBS upgraded the stock to “buy” from “neutral.”
Asian markets were subdued on the back of hotter-than-expected inflation data from Japan. [MKTS/GLOB]
Investors await key U.S. data, including the U.S. core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index – the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation – on Thursday.
On that same day, domestic data is expected to show India’s growth likely moderated to 6.6% year-on-year in the October-December quarter.
The broader, more domestically-focussed small- and mid-caps gained 0.6% and 0.3%, respectively, on the day.
Among individual stocks, Dixon Technologies and Whirlpool of India dropped 3.3% and 2.5%, respectively after Jefferies downgraded the stocks to “underperform”. ($1 = 82.8820 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng, sonia Cheema and Savio D’Souza)
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