MUMBAI: Traders, speculators today got caught in an extraordinary storm of shorting and covering in Nifty by foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) in late November. Due to the storm, beyond the understanding of many players and investors, people started asking each other what was the negative reason that the market fell so much. On the global front, on one hand, despite Israel’s ceasefire with Lebanon, caution is still being exercised in this matter, while on the other hand, there are reports of Ukraine’s NG sector and America being targeted on a large scale. Despite reports of fresh uncertainty over interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, index-led gains in Indian stock markets today came amid talk of fresh large short positions against an overall modest decline in global markets.
In derivatives, there was talk of funds, majors creating large short positions in Nifty today with soft targeting of specialized IT-software services, technology frontline stocks. As a result, Nifty, Sensex gained, while small, midcap stocks remained selectively bought. Led by selling by funds in automobile, banking, consumer durables, healthcare stocks along with IT stocks, Sensex retreated from high of 80447.40 and finally fell 1190.34 points to close at 79043.74 and Nifty spot recovered from high of 24345.75 at 360.75. Closed. score. Closed at 23914.15.
