Indian equity benchmark -- Nifty -- ended Wednesday’s trading session on a higher note ahead of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy decision. After making a slightly positive start, soon index slipped into negative terrain, as investors were concerned with a private report indicating that India's retail inflation likely accelerated to 6.40% in July on surging food prices, breaching the upper end of the Reserve Bank of India's 2%-6% tolerance band for the first time in five months. Further, persistent foreign fund outflows weighed down on the sentiments. Provisional data from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed foreign institutional investors (FII) offloaded shares worth Rs 711.34 crore on August 8. In afternoon session, index continued to trade on a lower note, as investors took a note of Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary’s statement that the government lost a little over Rs 1 lakh crore in 2020-21 on account of a cut in corporate taxes. However, in last leg of trade, index made a recovery and ended with gains of 61.70 points, as investors went for fundamentally strong stocks.
Traders were seen piling up positions in Media, Metal and Oil & Gas stocks, while selling was witnessed in Realty, Financial Services and Bank. The top gainers from the F&O segment were Bharat Forge, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail and India Cements. On the other hand, the top losers were Bata India, Syngene International and Divi's Laboratories. In the index option segment, maximum OI continues to be seen in the 19900 - 20100 calls and 19600 - 19800 puts indicating this is the trading range expectation.
