A more-than-expected hawkish stance by the US Federal Reserve halted the rally in stock markets across the world on Thursday. Mirroring the same, India’s benchmark indices, Sensex and Nifty, snapped their three-day gain and declined 1.4 per cent and 1.32 per cent, respectively. While the Sensex fell 878 points to close at 61,799, the Nifty declined 245 points at 18,414. In the US, key index futures were trading nearly 1 per cent lower when the Indian markets were open.

The Fed hiked the rate by 50 bps and its chief Jerome Powell declared that the central bank was not to stop and may push the terminal rate to 5.1 per cent or higher — in taming inflation despite ebbing price pressures and mounting fears of job losses.

DIIs buy

“The short term trend of Nifty seems to have reversed down after a small pull back rally recently. The immediate support is placed at 18,350 levels and a move below this could drag the index down to the next support of around 18,150-18,100 levels. Immediate resistance is placed at 18,550,” said Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities.

The domestic institutional investors (DIIs) are back to their balancing act and have turned net buyers of equities in December as foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) turned sellers. Data show FPIs sold stocks worth ₹51,514 crore in the cash markets so far in December while DIIs were net buyers to the tune of ₹9,009 crore.

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