Market Ends With Mild Cuts, Nifty Slightly Above 19,750

Sensex and Nifty fail to hold on to intra-day recovery, but close well above the opening levels, and banks fall in the last hour of trade. Nifty Bank sheds more than 300 points to end at 44,288, while Sensex falls 126 points at 66,282 and Nifty slips 43 points to 19,751.

Big bank names like Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and HDFC Bank staged a sharp fall in the last hour, and SBI ended nearly 2% lower on a brokerage downgrade. IT stocks remain a drag on the market with 8 out of the 10 stocks falling in the Nifty IT Index with Mphasis, Infosys and Coforge declining the most. Infosys slips more than 2% after the company cuts the upper band of CC revenue growth guidance for FY24, while HCLTech climbs 3% as management commentary remains positive despite the guidance cut.

Auto stocks buck the market's declining trend with Tata Motors rising as much as 5% and hitting a fresh 52-week high. In the FMCG pack, Nestle at Tata Consumer Products ended at record highs. HDFC Bank slides 1% ahead of its second quarterly earnings report on Sunday. This will be the first earnings for the HDFC-HDFC Bank merged entity.

Market breadth remains neutral, advance-decline ratio at 1:1.