Today is Valentine’s Day, and I was hoping the market would show some love to the investors who are currently buried under a lot of drawdowns. Unfortunately, that was not to be, as the market continued to plummet. It’s now more oversold than it was yesterday, and it has reached the oversold territory where a bounce could happen at any point. It could have bounced yesterday, it could bounce today, or it may bounce in the next few days. But a bounce is certainly on the cards.

There was some hope that the ongoing tariff war might have seen some reconciliation, or at least some cooling off. They did announce a few things, but now there’s a delayed decision until the 2nd of April. The U.S. will take on reciprocating tariffs, meaning they’ll impose tariffs on any tariffs the other side puts on them. For now, they are studying this approach. However, the market isn’t going to wait for that decision in April, and it has already taken a hit, smashing several sectors, including pharma. There’s fear that exports in the pharma sector could get impacted, which has further contributed to the downward trend. So, no good news today, but let’s see what happens moving forward.

Where is the market headed?

Market Overview

As for the markets, Nifty hasn’t been looking that bad, actually. Nifty has been trying to break below the 22,800 mark but hasn’t been successful for the last three times. There’s a sort of triple bottom forming here. Whether it’s a double bottom or a triple bottom doesn’t matter as long as it holds; that would be a good thing. However, in the last eight sessions, we haven’t gained even one point from where we opened each day. So, there’s extremely poor sentiment right now, but it can’t remain this way. Bounces will happen, and there will be jumps like this, but we won’t know where it will finally end until it has bottomed out and gone up again. That’s when people will say, “Oh, we should have bought there.” But for now, it’s making lower lows.

Nifty Next 50

Nifty Junior dropped 2.2% today with a sharp cut, closing below 60,000 for the first time in a long time. From 78,000, it’s now down to around 59,000, which is a pretty sharp decline.

Nifty Mid and Small Cap

Mid-caps are also taking a hit, down 2.39%, closing at 18,346. Small caps have been smashed even more, dropping 3.3%. There’s no respite here either. While Nifty is stagnating, the rest of the market continues to fall.

Nifty Bank Overview

Bank Nifty fell about 1% during the day but recovered somewhat, ending at a minus 0.53% for the day.

GOLD

As for gold, it’s up by 0.4% for the day. In INR terms, gold is looking to close another week at an all-time high. This is the seventh consecutive week of gains, which is quite rare. There’s a possibility that we might see some correction in gold soon. Seven or eight weeks of continuous growth could either point to something breaking down in the world, causing gold to shoot up 10–20% in a single day, or it could just experience a regular correction because it’s getting a bit overbought.

Advanced Declined Ratio Trends

The advanced-decline trends today show no advance at all in the market. All the sectors are in decline. Nifty only had 12% of its stocks advancing, and that’s about it. Everything else was really smashed down. Nifty small cap had only 51 stocks advancing, and mid-caps had just 5 stocks advancing. It’s very poor.

Nifty Heatmap

The breadth of the market heatmap is almost completely red, with some banking names and Reliance being the only exceptions. FMCG stocks aren’t looking too bad either. But there have been deep cuts in stocks like Bel Tronics, NTPC, Sun Pharma, Coal India, and Aisha Motors.

In the Nifty Next space, it’s completely red. There’s hardly any green, just a small 1-2% movement on the upside. Otherwise, everything has been hammered down badly

Sectoral Overview

All sectors are in the red, including FMCG, financial services, and banking, though they’ve been spared somewhat, along with the services sector, which was flat today. On the other hand, Defense, Media, Pharma, Capital Markets, Public Sector Enterprises, Energy, PSU banks, and Tourism have been smashed down by 2% or more in the last week alone. Capital markets are down 9.6%, and real estate is down 9.4%, showing very sharp cuts in just one week.

Looking at the last week, the entire market is red. The last month is almost completely red, with some banking stocks stagnating at near zero. Most things are still in the red. On an annual basis, most sectors are now in single digits or negative. Energy is down 22%, Media is down 30%, and Defense and Capital Markets, due to the big gains last year, still stand out.

Sectors of the Day

Nifty Defence Index

Even defense stocks are now getting hammered, with DCX down by 8%, Zen Technology down by 6.7%, and Mishra Dhatu down by 5.7%. Quite a dismal situation, no doubt.

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