After five consecutive weeks, Nifty took a breather in the last short week and ended with a loss of 74 points week on week to close at 10618. For the month of April, the 50-share index had bounced back with a vengeance and gained 6.2% highest in last 24 months. Among the major events, the US Fed kept the rates unchanged in its last week meeting and signalled to hike interest rate in the next meeting citing an increase in inflation. April goods and services tax (GST) collection stood at 1,03,500 crore post implementation of the e-way bill. The major automobile companies announced their April month sales number which grew by 14-16%.

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The market trend was subdued as firm crude price, rupee depreciating to near 67 level, fourth quarter results of Reliance, Castrol, HCL Tech, Hexaware disappointed the street. IndiGo also reported poor results and the sudden resignation of the chief executive officer, Aditya Ghosh, before the results, dampened the stock price. PC Jewelers stock price had a bungee jump as it touched life-time low of Rs 94.55 in the last week and bounced back to Rs 175.

The mid and small cap indices lost 2% and 1.2% respectively while the Bank Nifty outperformed with a gain of 1% led by private sector banks in which YES Bank, Kotak Bank and HDFC demonstrated stellar show in the Q4 results, rest all the sectors ended in the red in which Metals lost 3.5%, Energy, IT, Auto, Realty lost between 2-3%. The foreign institutional investors (FII) sold equities worth Rs 2,688 crore while the domestic institutional investors (DII) bought shares worth Rs 933 crore in the last week.

In the key events this week, China’s April month trade balance data will be released tomorrow and Bank of England meeting is scheduled on Thursday. India’s consumer price inflation and industrial production data for March month will be released on Friday. In the ongoing corporate earnings season, companies like Exide, ICICI Bank, Eicher Motors, Federal Bank, Nestle, Titan, Zee etc. will announce their fourth-quarter results during the week.

In this week, the market is likely to follow cues from the global markets. Also, result driven stock specific action can be seen. The equity market will continue to remain in consolidation amidst caution ahead of the Karnataka election on this Saturday. Technically, last week Nifty faced resistance near 10750 and closed below crucial level of 10630, however, the supports are at 10580 and 10530 while on the higher side 10680 and 10750 are the resistance. For the week, the trading range of Nifty could be between 10530 and 10800.

(By Yogesh Vinod Mehta)

The writer is VP- Retail Research, Motilal Oswal Securities Limited