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Below the Quote on Daily Market Commentary by Mr. Siddhartha Khemka, Head - Research, Wealth Management, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.

Nifty ended marginally lower at 22,471 level (-0.1%), amid volatility due to flare up in US tariff war. US President Trump initially announced to double the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium to 50% in retaliation to Canada’s tariff of 25% on electricity export to the US. However, he later reversed this decision indicating a flip-flop in US trade policies which is creating uncertainty amongst investors. The broader market also showed weakness with Nifty Midcap100 declining by 0.6% and Smallcap100 down by 0.2%. Amongst sectors, Nifty IT was down 3%, making it the top sectoral loser. Trump’s trade policies and his protectionist measures are likely to hurt Indian IT firms that derive a large portion of their revenue from the US. Also, there are concerns over US inflation data, which is set to be released later today. If the inflation remains high, the US Fed may delay interest rate cuts, which could in turn reduce IT spending. Capital market stocks declined as monthly systematic investment plan (SIP) inflows into mutual funds fell to a three-month low of Rs 25,999 crore in February amid market volatility. Conversely, there was buying interest in healthcare, private banking, auto and pharma space, with the said sectoral indices up between 0.5-0.7% each. India’s retail inflation eased to seven-month low of 3.61% in Feb’25, down from 4.31% in January. The industrial output growth was above expectation at 5% YoY in Jan’25 against 3.2% in December. These factors are likely to infuse some positive into the markets on Thursday. Overall, we expect the market to remain range-bound with some volatility and sector rotation.

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