Market Today: Sensex/Nifty Opens Lower, Ambuja Cements, Vedanta In Focus

In the pre-opening session, benchmark indexes were perceived to be trading poorly. The Nifty was down 50.30 points or 0.26% at 19,476.20, while the Sensex was down 292.99 points or 0.45% at 65,489.79. Early on Thursday, the GIFT Nifty had positive activity, rising 0.14% to 19,527. On Thursday, the market got off to a shaky start as the Nifty opened down 0.32 percent at 19463.80 and the Sensex opened down 0.35 percent at 65550.60 level.

On the Nifty, notable gainers included Sun Pharma, Divis Labs, HDFC Bank, and Dr. Reddy's Labs, while notable losers included UPL, UltraTech Cement, HDFC Life, Bharti Airtel, and Maruti Suzuki.

Dr. V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services said, "Market expectation of soft landing for the US economy is driving the mother market US, and with its support, global markets. India's strong performance is aided also by the superior performance of the Indian economy. Incoming data suggests that these fundamental supports to the markets are set to continue.

In the US, there are indications of inflation continuing on the downward trend while the economy is showing resilience. The winning streak of US markets has been continuing for the 3rd week for the Dow and 5th week for Nasdaq."

"In India even though the underlying strength of the market is strong, FPI selling of Rs 5000 crores during the last two trading sessions might restrain the bulls.

Market heavy weights RIL, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, L & T and ITC are on strong wicket," said V K Vijayakumar.

Ambuja Cements, Vedanta are the stocks that will be in focus today. Ravi Sanghi and his family will sell their shares of SIL to Ambuja Cements for 56.74 percent. On August 3, Ambuja-ACC announced an agreement to buy Sanghi Industries (SIL), a company situated in Gujarat, for a total of Rs 5,000 crore in cash. While Vedanta's block transaction, in which 16.5 Cr shares (4.5% equity) worth Rs 4,270 crore are traded, will be the subject of today's attention. According to CNBC-TV18, promoter Twin Star Holdings is probably a seller in the Vedanta block sale.

The market pattern will also track Q1 results as major companies like Bharti Airtel, Adani Enterprises, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Varun Beverages, Adani Power, Dabur India, Eicher Motors, Zomato, Cummins India, Lupin, MRF are going to announce their Q1FY24 results today.