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Dalal Street closed on a split note on Friday as an afternoon bounce lifted the Nifty 50 by 0.33% to 23,346, while the Sensex surrendered early gains in the final 30 minutes to settle marginally lower. With Brent crude still above $100, central banks turning hawkish, and a high-stakes governance battle erupting at Tata Sons, both indices logged their sixth consecutive weekly decline.
Dalal Street delivered a split verdict on Thursday as cautious optimism wrestled with persistent global macro pressures. While the Nifty managed a 53-point gain to close at 23,270, the Sensex ended flat with a negative bias, weighed down by an aggressive US Fed dot plot, $106 Brent crude, and massive liquidity absorption by the primary market.
Dalal Street halted its multi-session slide on Tuesday as both the Sensex and Nifty staged a relief rally from five-month lows, buoyed by defensive FMCG buying and central bank defense of the rupee. However, with Brent crude stubbornly elevated near $108 and US Treasury yields lingering at 5%, broader market sentiment remains guarded ahead of the Federal Reserve’s rate decision.
Dalal Street ended the last trading day of August on a sombre note. The bulls tried, but the headwinds were too strong.
After bleeding for two straight sessions, the bulls roared back in the final hour on Friday. The BSE Sensex climbed 330.91 points, or 0.43%, to close at 77,264.51 and the NSE Nifty 50 added 84.80 points, or 0.35%, to end at 24,175.65 as of 3:32 pm IST – well above the previous close of 76,933.59 and 24,090.85.
Dalal Street’s brief romance with the bulls ended in tears on Wednesday. What started as a cautiously optimistic morning turned into a full-blown sell-off by the closing bell, as benchmark indices capitulated to heavyweight selling.
It was a classic open-high, close-low session. Dalal Street started with a spring in its step and ended with a limp.
After starting deep in the red and bleeding through the morning session on August 25, benchmark indices staged a powerful late-session reversal to end near the day’s high, snapping a two-day losing run.
A late-session bounce saved Dalal Street from a deeper cut, but could not prevent the bears from stamping their authority on Monday. After a strong start, benchmark indices slid over 1% intra-day before recovering half the losses, closing marginally lower on cautious trade ahead of a major US announcement on Iran.
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