Indian stock market opens lower ahead of Q3 results

Mumbai: With the dawn of the Q3 FY25 results, the Indian stock market opened lower on Thursday as selling was seen in the auto, IT, PSU bank and financial service sectors.

At around 9.27 am, Sensex was trading at 77,879.72 after dropping 268.77 points or 0.34 per cent, while Nifty was trading at 23,610.55 after declining 78.40 points or 0.33 per cent.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), 1,177 stocks were trading in green, while 958 stocks were in red.

Nifty Bank was down 202.90 points or 0.41 per cent at 49,632.15. Nifty Midcap 100 index was trading at 56,172.40 after dropping 98.20points or 0.17 per cent. Nifty Smallcap 100 index was at 18,357.95 after declining 7.70 points or 0.04 per cent.

According to experts, with the Q3 results season starting from today, there will be market reaction to results.

The results of TCS will give an indication of what is in store for the IT sector. The strength of the US economy and the depreciation of rupee will be tailwinds for the IT sector.

“Premium segments like hotels, jewellery, automobiles catering to the premium market and airlines are likely to report good numbers,” according to experts.

Expectations from US President Donald Trump’s policy decisions and the Indian Union Budget proposals will keep the market volatile in the coming days,” they noted.

Meanwhile, in the Sensex pack, SBI, Zomato, Sun Pharma, L&T, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, UltraTech Cement, Nestle India, Tata Steel, Bajaj Finance and Power Grid were the top losers. Whereas, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tata Motors, M&M, Asian Paints, TCS, Infosys and Hindustan Unilever were the top gainers.

The Dow Jones climbed 0.25 per cent to close at 42,635.20. The S&P 500 gained 0.16 per cent to 5,918.30 and the Nasdaq declined 0.06 per cent to close at 19,478.88 in the last trading session.

In the Asian markets, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Seoul were trading in green. While China, Bangkok and Japan were trading in red.

“So far in January, FIIs have sold equity for Rs 10,419 crore. With the dollar index at 109 and the 10-year bond yield at 4.67 per cent, FIIs are likely to continue with their selling strategy putting pressure on the market in the near-term,” said experts.

FIIs sold equities worth Rs 3,362.18 crore on January 8 and domestic institutional investors bought equities worth Rs 2,716.28 crore on the same day.

–IANS