Stocks snapped a 4-day winning streak on Monday as banks bore the brunt of heavy selling after they slashed lending rates on home loans as a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's drive to make housing more affordable to the poor. Real Estate stocks surged on hopes that lower interest rates will spur demand for their excessive inventory.
Meanwhile, bulls continued to dominate proceedings on the first trading day of calendar 2017. The Nifty opened lower, but it was able to attract buyers at 8,150 levels as they bought into cement, realty, pharma, media and metals shares. Auto stocks did well in trade despite tepid monthly sales data for December.
Here is the snapshot of the day's play:
* Nifty slips 6 points to close at 8,180 points, recovers from intra-day low of 8,137 points.
* Ambuja Cement, Tata Steel, M&M, UltraTech Cement, Tata Motors dropped 3.3-4.1 per cent and were among 28 stocks that rose.
* HDFC, Bank of Baroda, State Bank, IndusInd Bank and Bajaj Auto dropped 1.4-3.7 per cent and were among 23 stocks that fell on the Nifty.
* State Bank, Maruti and Bharat Financials were the top traded shares by value. Indiabulls housing and LIC Housing Finance were the new entrants on this list as well.
* JP Associates, HDIL and State Bank saw hectic volume activity.
* Banks were the worst hit after they collectively cut housing loan costs by 90 basis points. At one time 9 out of top 10 losers on the Nifty were banks. They took all four banking benchmarks lower between 0.8-1.5 per cent.
* The Sensex shed 31 points to 26,595 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Tata Steel was the top gainer and State Bank the top loser. Maruti was heavily traded on the index.
* The Realty index surged 4.4% and its constituents rose between 1.2-8.9 per cent.
* Broader markets inched up even as benchmark indices dropped. The NSE 100, 200 and 500 indices were up 0.2 per cent. Strong buying was witnessed in the mid cap and small cap stocks.
* Bulls had sentiment under their control with 1126 shares rising versus 384 that fell.