The stock market opened in the red with a fall, Sensex fell by more than 500 points, pressure on IT shares.

Mumbai, 24 February. Due to weak signals from the American market, the Indian stock market opened in the red with a decline on Tuesday, the second trading day of the week. The Sensex opened 242 points lower at 83,053 and fell nearly 500 points to the day’s low of 82,725.30. At the same time, NSE Nifty opened at 25,641.80, falling 71 points from its previous close (25,713.00). Till the time of writing the news (around 9.30 am), the 30-share BSE Sensex was down by 557.14 points or 0.67 percent at 82,737.52, while the NSE Nifty was down by 154.20 (0.60 percent) points at 25,558.80.

During this period, all the Nifty indices were seen trading in the red. In the broader market, the Nifty Midcap 100 index declined by 0.72 percent, while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index declined by 0.88 percent. Besides, the BSE Midcap 150 index fell 0.5 per cent and the Smallcap 250 declined 0.6 per cent. Talking sector wise, Nifty IT recorded the maximum decline of 3.34 percent.

Apart from this, a decline of 0.54 percent was seen in Nifty Auto, 0.48 percent in Nifty FMCG and 0.12 percent in Nifty Bank. Out of 30 shares in the Sensex pack, 25 shares recorded a decline, in which shares of HCL Tech, Eternal, Infosys, TCS, Bharti Airtel and Tech Mahindra were among the top losers, while shares of SBI, Asian Paints, Axis Bank, PowerGrid, Tata Steel and Kotak Bank witnessed gains.

According to market experts, in the last trading session, Nifty 50 opened gap-up with a gain of 100 points, which created a strong bullish environment in the market. Talking about technical levels, the range of 25,850-25,900 is the major resistance in Nifty, while the level of 25,550-25,600 can act as support. According to a market expert, after two consecutive sessions of selling, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) made a comeback on February 23 and bought shares worth Rs 3,843 crore. With this he has become a net buyer for this month also. On the other hand, domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth Rs 1,292 crore.

Experts say that amid global uncertainties and increasing fluctuations, investors should adopt a cautious and selective strategy. During market downturn, it would be better to focus on stocks with strong fundamentals. It is advisable to avoid aggressive buying at current levels. Only after a strong and sustainable breakout in Nifty above 26,000 level can a strong opportunity for new buying be created. Till then it would be wise to adopt a stock-specific strategy along with risk management.