Share market lost initial gains; Sensex fell 402 points, Nifty slipped below 24900

The domestic stock market wiped off early morning gains in the front-line indices in the first hour of trade on Monday. After rising 250 points, the Sensex was trading 416.87 (0.51%) points lower at 81,352.48 at 11:10 am while Nifty had slipped 162.90 0.65% points to trade at 24,851.70.

In line with global cues, Indian markets opened in the green on Monday. The Indian markets have lost more than 4 per cent in the previous week. The Nifty50 opened at 25,084.10 points, up 69.50 points or 0.28 per cent, while the BSE Sensex opened at 81,852.01, up 163.56 points or 0.20 per cent.

Market experts said, "Indian markets are expected to remain positive this week, but geopolitical conditions and the earning season starting this week may affect the market performance.

Ajay Bagga, a banking and market expert, elaborated, "We expect better performance in Indian markets this week; the catch is, from all expectations, hostilities in the Middle East do not spiral out of control. Earnings are expected to kick off at the end of the week, and markets have to analyze economic news rather than the rising geopolitical risk, which has become common after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023."

Among sectoral indices, Nifty IT was up over 1 per cent in early trade. Quarterly results of major IT companies such as TCS are awaited late this week. Nifty Metal was the top gainer, followed by Nifty IT, | that jumped over 0.9 per cent each at the time of writing this article. ITC, Trent and HCL Tech were among the top gainers in the Nifty 50 pack, while Titan, Hindustan Unilever and Britannia were among the top losers.

Varun Agarwal, MD, Profit Idea said, "The near term uptrend for Nifty 50 has turned sharply downwards and now support is placed near 25,000. A modest bounce can be expected early in the weekly session but one should avoid holding long positions as the market is still volatile. Below 25,000, a slide towards 24,500 can be witnessed."

Other Asian markets were also higher on Monday: Japan's Nikkei 225 sailed higher, recording a gain of more than 1.8 percent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.2 percent. The markets in South Korea and Taiwan also rose over 1 percent.