Sensex, Nifty trade cautious on US-Iran tension; ONGC, JSW Steel, Castrol India stocks dip

The stock market of India nudged down after trading range-bound for the whole day as the investors await some positive news coming out from the US-Iran standoff post-tanker attack. The BSE Sensex lost 71 but retained the psychologival 39,000 levels by closing at 39,122 while the 50-stock Nifty went down 24 points to 11,699 levels. The index Bank Nifty went down 26 points and closed at 30,602 levels. Jain Irrigation, HDIL, Suzlon Energy, Lakshmi Vilas Bank and DHFL were the top five gaining stocks while Cox & Kings, Reliance Power, Glenmark Pharma, JaiprakashAssociates and Emami were the top five losing stocks in the intraday trade.

Speaking on the market outlook Simi Bhaumik, a SEBI registered technical equity analyst told Zee Business online, "The market is now in a broader range of 11,650 to 11,950 and I would advise traders to adopt buy on dips." She said that if the 11,650 levels get broken, then we can expect some further downtrend may be up to 11,550, which is a strong support for the current market.

Oil and Gas stocks led the blood bath in the intraday trade as the BSE Oil and Gas index went down around 1.8 per cent. Oil and Gas major Indraprastha Gas crashed 4.43 per cent, shares of ONGC nosedived 3.48 per cent, Oil India counter went down 2.25 per cent, IOCL went down near 1.45 per cent, Castrol India stocks dipped 2.42 per cent while GAIL counter went down around 1.5 per cent.

Metal stocks closely follwed Oil and Gas stocks as the BSE Metal index went down over 1.4 per cent. Metal major Jindal Steel & Power share price crashed 4.67 per cent, JSW Steel stocks dipped 3.5 per cent, Tata Steel and Vedanta went off 2.33 per cent, SAIL went down 1.8 per cent, the share of Hindustan Zinc went down 1.4 per cent, while NDMC went down 1.26 per cent.

Among Asian stocks, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index nudged 0.13 per cent up, South Korean Kospi rose 0.03 per cent, Hang Seng surge 0.14 per cent while the Shanghai market added 0.21 per centt in the intraday trade.