Nifty extends losing streak to 7 sessions, closes below 24,100
Will 24,000-23,900 act as support zone for now?
Welcome to Aftermarket Report, a newsletter where we do a quick daily wrap-up of what happened in the markets, both in India and globally.
In our latest episode of In The Money by Zerodha, we celebrate one year of In The Money with Sandeep Rao, the host behind the channel.
Sandeep looks back at his journey in the markets, from his early days of investing and discovering derivatives to developing his systematic approach to trading.
He also shares how his thinking has evolved over the years, what he has learned from the traders and investors he once looked up to, how AI has changed the way he learns, and why trading is about much more than simply having a set of rules.
Markets Today
Nifty opened flat at 24,152, as elevated oil prices, rising bond yields, fresh El Niño concerns pointing to weaker rainfall, and continued weakness in domestic sentiment weighed on the market. The index came under pressure almost immediately, falling to 24,070 within the first 20 minutes before briefly recovering towards 24,100.
The recovery failed to sustain, and selling resumed after 10 AM, dragging Nifty steadily lower towards 24,050 by around 10:45 AM. The index touched a first-half low near 24,030 at around 11 AM, before attempting a recovery towards 24,080 by close to noon. However, the rebound once again faded, and Nifty ended the first half hovering around the 24,050–24,060 zone.
In the second half, the index remained largely directionless and choppy, oscillating mostly between 24,040 and 24,065, with multiple recovery attempts failing to gather momentum. Nifty briefly slipped to an intraday low near 24,025 around 2:20 PM, before recovering modestly.
A sharp move during the closing auction helped the index recover a large part of its intraday losses, with Nifty eventually settling at 24,078.30, around 75 points below its opening level but nearly 50 points above the day's low.
Sectoral Indices Performance
Winners & Losers
Commodities
FII / DII Flows
Here’s the trend of FII-DII activity from the last 5 days:
Thematic Indices
Tijori’s niche indices, where today’s move sorts pockets of the market beyond standard sector baskets. You can also track promoter buying and other interesting stuff, like Capex activity by the companies in the Tijori App’s idea dashboard
Change in OI for the day
The following is the change in OI for Nifty contracts expiring on 25th August:
The maximum Call Open Interest (OI) is observed at 24,500, followed by 24,300, indicating potential resistance at the 24,300- 24,400 levels.
The maximum Put Open Interest (OI) is observed at 24,000, followed by 23,700, suggesting support at 24,000-23,900.
Note: OI is subject to multiple interpretations; however, generally, an increase in Call OI indicates resistance in a falling market, while an increase in Put OI indicates support in a rising market.
Source: Sensibull
Top Stories in India
India has replaced Indonesia as Asia’s least-preferred equity market among fund managers surveyed by Bank of America, with 32% of respondents net underweight on Indian equities. The biggest concerns were India’s lack of clear AI exposure and weak growth prospects, while high valuations and insufficient reforms also contributed to the bearish outlook. Dive deeper
The rupee weakened to its lowest level since late July, closing at ₹95.75 per dollar compared with ₹95.68 in the previous session. Elevated crude oil prices and sustained corporate dollar demand weighed on the currency, although likely RBI intervention helped limit further losses. Dive deeper
L&T Technology Services secured a five-year engagement worth over $75 million from a leading global technology company. The deal will deploy LTTS’ Engineering Intelligence capabilities across the client’s end-to-end product development and engineering lifecycle, aimed at accelerating the development of next-generation products and solutions. Dive deeper
Escorts Kubota announced a ₹2,000 crore investment to set up a new manufacturing plant in Uttar Pradesh’s YEIDA industrial area. The facility will be one of Kubota Group’s largest manufacturing plants globally, significantly expanding the company’s farm and construction equipment manufacturing capacity in India. Dive deeper
The Union Cabinet approved railway and highway projects worth over ₹13,000 crore across five states to expand rail capacity and improve road connectivity. The approvals include four railway multitracking projects on the Chennai-Howrah corridor worth ₹9,450 crore and the ₹3,591 crore four-laning of the Muzaffarpur-Sitamarhi-Sonbarsa section of NH-22 in Bihar. Dive deeper
Top Stories Globally
WTI crude oil rose towards $86 per barrel, extending gains for a fourth consecutive session, as the U.S. and Iran showed little progress towards reaching an agreement to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The prolonged deadlock kept concerns over Middle East oil supply disruptions elevated, supporting crude prices. Dive deeper
China’s LandSpace successfully recovered the first-stage booster of its Zhuque-3 rocket after an orbital launch, becoming the country’s first commercial rocket company to both reach orbit and recover its first stage. The milestone advances China’s push towards lower-cost reusable rockets, with LandSpace becoming only the fourth entity globally to recover a launch vehicle, after SpaceX, Blue Origin and China’s state-owned aerospace corporation. Dive deeper
Moderna shares surged 60% in pre-market trading after its mRNA cancer vaccine, Intismeran, combined with Merck’s Keytruda, succeeded in a late-stage skin cancer trial. Interim results showed the combination met its primary goal of reducing cancer recurrence as well as its secondary target of preventing the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. Dive deeper
Unitree Robotics shares surged more than five-fold on their Shanghai trading debut, marking a major milestone for China’s rapidly growing humanoid robotics industry. Dive deeper
SK Hynix announced plans to buy back and cancel treasury shares worth 40 trillion won (around ₹2.75 lakh crore) after its stock plunged roughly 50% in less than two months. Dive deeper
Management Chatter
In this section, we highlight interesting comments from management at major companies and from policymakers in the Indian and Global Economies.
Nirmal Kumar Minda, Executive Chairman, Uno Minda Group on import dependence & manufacturing:
“We are looking at import dependence sector by sector. First, we need to understand why we are importing — what are the top five reasons for imports in a particular sector and what can we do about them.”
“Industry should be able to focus its capital on manufacturing rather than putting it into land and buildings. If plug-and-play industrial infrastructure is available on a rental basis, the industry can simply bring in the machinery and deploy 100 percent of its capital towards the product and equipment.” - Link
Prabha Narasimhan, MD & CEO of Colgate-Palmolive (India) says that only 19% of India’s toothpaste category is currently premium, substantially below categories such as soaps and shampoos:
“Our premiumization percentage as a category, in the toothpaste category, is about 19%, or about a fifth of the category, above the 140 index. If you look at toilet soap and shampoo, those numbers are in the order of magnitude of 2x and 3x. As a community of toothpaste brands, we certainly have an opportunity to do more, and Colgate can be at the forefront of this. Being at the forefront is an exceptionally important pillar for us.” - Link
Corporate Actions & Events
Corporate Actions
Published by Zerodha. Not investment advice. Data from NSE, BSE, and MCX.
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