Metals and mining stocks slumped in Wednesday’s trade after the Supreme Court ruled that states can levy tax and royalty on minerals, apart from Central duties, and collect past dues. Stocks such as Tata Steel, NMDC and Vedanta fell sharply.
At 12.14 pm, Nifty metal declined by 1.15 per cent to trade at 8,854.50.
The major losers among Nifty metal stocks, as per NSE data, include Ratnamani Metals & Tubes (-3.76%), NMDC (-3.51%), Hindustan Copper (-3.24%), Tata Steel (-2.55%), Adani Enterprises (-1.43%), and Vedanta (-0.99%).
Hindalco shares slipped by 0.23 per cent to trade at ₹620.
Meanwhile, Hindustan Zinc and Jindal Steel stocks traded positive by over 1 per cent as at 12.32 pm.
Shrikant Chouhan, Head Equity Research, Kotak Securities, stated that the fall in the Nifty-Metal index is mainly due to the continued poor performance, which is not in line with the broader market trend.
“Technically, the index is showing weakness. It is trading comfortably below the 20, 50 and 100 days SMA, which may push the index to the 200 days SMA, which is around 8300 levels very soon. To summarise, the index may fall by 5 to 8 per cent in the near term. On the higher side, 9200 will be the biggest hurdle for it. The strategy should be to buy only on deep corrections and reduce the weak stock on every small rally in the stock,” Chouhan added.