Benchmarks at the day's low: IT shares in demand

The key equity barometers slumped and hit fresh intraday low in early afternoon trade. The Nifty traded below the 18,350 mark after hitting the day's high of 18,473.35 in early trade. IT shares extended gains for second consecutive session.

At 12:27 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 265.3 points or 0.43% to 61,436.99. The Nifty 50 index declined 69.15 points or 0.38% to 18,316.15.

The broader market outperformed the frontline indices. The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.11% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index shed 0.07%.

The market breadth was negative. On the BSE, 1,533 shares rose and 1,849 shares fell. A total of 155 shares were unchanged.

SEBI tweaks buyback rules:

On Tuesday, market regulator SEBI said it will allow listed companies to utilise 75% of their surplus funds for share buybacks instead of 50% earlier. SEBI has said that these buybacks will be slowly phased out from the secondary market exchange platforms and conducted on a separate window. This is to ensure transparency in the tender process. SEBI said it will also cut the time for share buyback to 66 days from the present 90-day period.

Derivatives:

The NSE's India VIX, a gauge of the market's expectation of volatility over the near term, surged 5.31% to 14.51. The Nifty 29 December 2022 futures were trading at 18,358.80, at a premium of 42.65 points as compared with the spot at 18,316.15.

The Nifty option chain for the 29 December 2022 expiry showed maximum Call OI of 45.4 lakh contracts at the 18,500 strike price. Maximum Put OI of 46 lakh contracts were seen at 18,000 strike price.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty IT index rose 0.45% to 28,740.35. The index has added 0.64% in two sessions.

LTI Mindtree (up 1.86%), Coforge (up 1.14%), Tech Mahindra (up 1.09%), Mphasis (up 1.06%) and HCL Technologies (up 0.77%) were the top gainers.

Among the other gainers were L&T Technology Services (up 0.74%), Persistent Systems (up 0.65%), Wipro (up 0.33%), Tata Consultancy Services (up 0.18%) and Infosys (up 0.03%).

Stocks in Spotlight:

Bharti Airtel shed 0.74%. The telecom major on Tuesday announced that it has acquired about 8% stake in technology startup, Immensitas (Lemnisk) under its Start Up Accelerator Program. Lemnisk is a Bengaluru based start up that offers real-time marketing automation and secure customer data platform (CDP) capable of orchestrating 1-to-1 personalization and cross-channel customer journeys at scale that increases conversions, retention, and growth for enterprises.

Mindspace Business Parks REIT rose 0.37%. The real estate trust announced that is has issued commercial papers of Rs 100 crore for a maturity of three months at an interest rate of 7.20% per annum.

Neogen Chemicals added 0.66%. The company informed that the credit rating agency ICRA had assigned "[ICRA] A (Stable)" rating on the long-term (LT) debt instruments of the company. Further, the agency has assigned "[ICRA] A2+ rating to the short-term debt instruments of Neogen Chemicals.

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