Reliance Industries makes for nearly a third of Nifty’s fall today ⁠— Tata Motors and Maruti beat the trend

• Fall in shares of Reliance, Shree Cements, SBI and others led to sudden drop in Sensex, Nifty 50 in the second half.
• The fall may have been sharper if not for automobile stocks that rallied today on report of improvement in chip shortage.
• Check out the latest news and updates on Business Insider.

The Indian market slid sharply in the second half of trade on Tuesday (November 16). Nifty 50 broke below the 18,000 mark and Reliance Industries (RIL) contributed to nearly 30% of the fall, as at 2:40 p.m. 37 of the 50 stocks were in decline at the time.

If not for the rally in automobile stocks like Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki, the fall may have been sharper. The sell-off was the worst in pharmaceuticals, banks ⁠— particularly the state-owned ones like State Bank of India (SBI) ⁠— and the energy index fell over a percent largely due to the sell off in RIL shares.

Top losers : Nifty 50
As of 3:30 PM on November 16

“Some correction is expected as investors are selling PSU and some other stocks to make way for LIC, which is expected to be launched around February. This can be one of the triggers for the fall. Another 5% correction could happen in the next 15-20 days due to global weak sentiment,” said Abhishek Jain, chief market strategist at BP Equities.

Cements stocks like Shree Cements fell after a report indicated that cement companies have dropped plans to hike prices for the month of November. “Cement prices have seen some correction especially in eastern market and in western market there was a hike after Diwali, which has been reversed right now,” added Jain.

The top five gainers on the Nifty 50 were all auto stocks after Morgan Stanley said that the chip shortage, which had stalled production for car makers around the world, may be easing finally. A similar commentary from Uttar Pradesh-based electronic products manufacturer Dixon Technologies took the shares higher.

Some of the most traded stocks on the National Stock Exchange ⁠— the largest by volume ⁠— were auto parts makers Mahindra CIE and Suprajit Engineering, and cloud solutions company Tanla Platforms. All three stocks saw nearly ten times the volume of shares traded on an average in the last five days, and all three of them gained over 5% today.

Aegis Health and P&G Health hit a 52-week low today. Investors continued to dump shares of IndusInd Bank and Hindalco and both shares are now among the biggest losers on the Nifty 100 index in the last one month.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the billion dollar company that has a near monopoly in railway ticket bookings and catering, jumped 1.8% today. Still, it’s shareholders have lost over 21% of the value in the last one month.

Top losers on Nifty 100 in the last one month

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