Nifty ended flat with negative bias on Tuesday, amid elevated crude oil prices and lingering uncertainty over US-Iran tensions. After making a flat-to-negative start, the index soon turned volatile and continued to trade near neutral line till the end of the session, as market participants avoided risky bids ahead of monthly F&O expiry. Traders were cautious with the exchange data showing that Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded Indian equities worth Rs 1,462.49 crore on Monday. Meanwhile, traders overlooked Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s statement that the Centre is committed to reducing the fiscal deficit, as evidenced by the annual budgets, stressing that the national debt will be limited to 50% of the GDP by 2030. Finally, Nifty ended below 22,750 mark.
Most of the sectorial indices ended in green except Cement, Private Bank and IT. The top gainers from the F&O segment were Sona BLW Precision Forgings, Mankind Pharma and Tata Consumer Products. On the other hand, the top losers were Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, Ambuja Cements and REC. In the index option segment, maximum OI continues to be seen in the 23400 - 23600 calls and 22900 - 23100 puts indicating this is the trading range expectation.
