Nifty below 17,700; European shares decline

The domestic equity barometers continued to trade with moderate losses in afternoon trade. The Nifty traded below the 17,700 level after hitting the day's high of 17,772.35 in early trade. Barring the Nifty metal index, all the sectoral indices on the NSE were in the red. Trading was volatile due to expiry of weekly index options on the NSE.

At 13:28 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 302.9 or 0.50% to 60,045.19. The Nifty 50 index lost 92.70 points or 0.52% to 17,661.70.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index slipped 0.03% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index gained 0.08%.

The market breadth was negative. On the BSE, 1,677 shares rose and 1,697 shares fell. A total of 152 shares were unchanged.

Gainers and Losers:

Tata Steel (up 1.74%), NTPC (up 1.45%), Axis Bank (up 1.36%), Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (up 1.23%) and Bharti Airtel (up 1.21%) were major Nifty gainers.

Adani Enterprises (down 4.69%), Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (down 2.74%), Mahindra & Mahindra (down 2.40%), Reliance Industries (down 1.90%) and ITC (down 1.47%) were were top Nifty losers.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Reliance Industries shed 1.90%. Radisys Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance's Jio Platforms has signed definitive aggreements to acquire Mimosa Networks from Airspan Networks Holdings for $60 million on a debt free, cash free basis.

Power Grid Corporation of India fell 0.31%. The company has announced its plans to issue unsecured, non-convertible, non-cumulative, redeemable, taxable PowerGrid bonds-LXXI aggregating upto Rs 900 crore on private placement basis. The PSU's committee of directors for bonds has approved issue of bonds having base size of upto Rs 300 crore and green shoe option upto Rs 600 crore.

State Bank of India (SBI) declined 0.50%. The country's largest lender has raised Rs 3,717 crore through its third Basel III compliant Additional Tier 1 bond issuance in the current financial year on Wednesday at coupon rate of 8.25%. The proceeds of bonds will be utilized in augmenting Additional Tier 1 Capital and overall capital base of the bank and for strengthening capital adequacy in accordance with RBI Guidelines.

Global markets:

Shares in Europe declined while Asian shares traded mixed on Thursday as Bank of Japan kicks off its two-day monetary policy meeting.

Japan's GDP grew slower at 0.1% on an annualized for the October-December quarter. The reading is weaker compared with preliminary estimates of a 0.6% growth, and also comes in lower than a 0.8% expansion. Private consumption, which accounts for around 57% of Japan's GDP, inched up by only 0.3%.

Meanwhile, China's consumer price index (CPI) for February was 1.0% higher than a year earlier, rising at the slowest pace since February 2022 and compared with the 2.1% annual rise seen in January, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In the US, major stock indexes ended mixed as traders parsed stronger than expected economic data, sparking concerns of bigger rate increases following Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's congressional speech.

Stronger-than-expected private payrolls numbers for February reaffirmed the strength of the US economy. Private employment increased by 242,000 jobs last month, the ADP National Employment report showed on Wednesday. Data for January was revised higher to show 119,000 jobs added instead of 106,000 as previously reported.

Vacancies at US employers retreated at the start of the year but remained historically elevated. The number of available positions decreased to 10.8 million in January from an upwardly revised 11.2 million a month earlier, the Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Wednesday.

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