Midcap stocks lose some steam

Snapping their seven-session rising streak, Sensex and Nifty ended with marginal losses on Tuesday. The Nifty Midcap index witnessed its biggest drop in the last six months during the day as investors rushed to book profit following the recent steep rally in most index members. The index fell as much as 885 points in intra-day trade before paring some losses and settling at 32,170.70, down 714.10 points or 2.2%.

The sell-off was also seen in small cap space as the Nifty Smallcap100 index declined 1.7% to 11,480.70 points.
Stocks with high retail presence such as IRCTC, Tata Power fell anywhere between 7.2% to 10.7% on Tuesday.
With 86% of the index members ending the session in red, the combined market capitalisation of the midcap index narrowed by Rs 82,793 crore to Rs 34.2 lakh crore.

However, both midcap and small cap indices have outperformed the broader Nifty50 so far in 2021 with 54% and 62% gains. The Nifty50 has gained 31.7% during the same period. After touching its lifetime high of 62,245.43 during the session, the 30-share BSE Sensex settled 49.54 points lower at 61,716.05. Similarly, the Nifty shed 58.30 points to close at 18,418.75. It touched a new intra-day record of 18,604.45 in early deals.

ITC was the top laggard in the Sensex pack, tanking over 6 per cent, followed by HUL, Titan, Tata Steel, UltraTech Cement and PowerGrid. On the other hand, Tech Mahindra, L&T, Infosys, Bajaj Finserv, Kotak Bank and HDFC Bank were among the gainers.