Markets end on a cautious note ahead of Nov F&O expiry; Winter session eyed

The 30 share Sensex ended at 25,776 levels, down by 44 points while Nifty50 settled at 7,832 levels, down by 18 points.

After witnessing range bound trades, domestic equities ended the session on a sluggish note ahead of the expiry of derivatives contracts for the month of November on Thursday.

The onset of winter session of the Parliament has also weighed on the sentiment across the bourses. Meanwhile, markets will remain closed tomorrow on account of ‘Guru Nanak Jayanti.’

The 30 share Sensex ended at 25,776 levels, down by 44 points while Nifty50 settled at 7,832 levels, down by 18 points. “After correcting sharply from 8,340 levels, Nifty tested the levels of 7,700 in single downswing. From past few days, nifty is consolidating in the range of 7,700-7,900 levels with negative bias.

Considering all, Nifty is likely to form “Head and Shoulder” pattern on daily charts, which is bearish in nature,” said Mudit Goyal, Technical Analyst, SMC Global Securities.“

He further said, “Although we don’t have the neckline breakdown of same but its consolidation indicates that there will be a major downside from current levels.

So any breakdown of 7,700 levels can open the door for further downside by 7,540 levels. On the higher side, any breakout of 7,950 can give the decent upside upto 8,100 levels.” Investors would keenly watch the proceedings of Parliament as monsoon session was a complete washout and key legislative bills such as Goods and Services Tax (GST) did not see the light of the day.

However, the broader markets outperformed the benchmark indices with BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices ended up between 0.1-0.3% each.

From the smallcap space, Lanco Infratech and Gammon India shares ended 20% up after having locked in an upper circuit on the BSE.

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Gammon India rose after lenders have decided to take over the management control of infrastructure developer under the strategic debt recast scheme.

Lanco Infratech too soared 20% at Rs 6.39 after the company said it earned consolidated net profit of Rs 98.98 crore for the quarter ended September 2015, after a gap of three years, driven by strong operational performance and favourable power tariff order. Sectorally, BSE Capital Goods and IT indices slipped between 0.6-1.2 % each.

On the flip side, BSE Realty and Oil & Gas indices among others gained between 0.6- 1.2% Individually, Maruti Suzuki emerged as a top loser, down by 2% as the company is in the middle of a voting by minority shareholders for its upcoming Gujarat plant after claiming that it will have total control over the plant in spite of investments coming from parent company Suzuki.

Infosys was another sore point as it registered 1.2% losses. As per the announcement on BSE, Ms. Carol M. Browner has resigned as Member of the Board and Independent Director of the Company with immediate effect, due to personal reasons. Luxury British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) CEO informed that the company will post a lower pre-tax profit in 2015 than in the previous fiscal year, due to major investments and a blast at China's Tianjin port that destroyed thousands of its cars.

Tata Motors skid 0.2% Hindalco(0.8%) and Vedanta(0.1%) continued their decline on the BSE on the back of their exclusion from the BSE Sensex effective December 21.

Steel companies are under pressure due to low demand and very low prices, which can leave either slender or no margin for producers.

Tata Steel ended flat while JSW Steel ended 0.2% Pharma stocks displayed weakness with Sun Pharma finishing down by 1.5% after it made payment of interest on and redemption amount pertaining to 5,000 secured rated redeemable non-convertible debentures (NCD) of the face value of Rs 10 lakh each aggregating to Rs 500 crore.

On the flip side, another drug major Pfizer jumped 2.5% after it announced that the company has struck a deal of $160 billion deal to merger with Allergan, the maker of Botox, in one of the biggest takeovers in the health care industry From the oil space, as per media reports, ONGC may go ahead with cluster two development of the KG filed.

ONGC finished with 0.5% gains. RIL advanced 1.7%