Investor wealth drops ₹2 tn; RIL, Infosys, HUL lead losses

livemint.com:

MUMBAI : Equity benchmarks fell the most in four months on Friday, as investors booked profits in heavyweight Reliance Industries Ltd ahead of its earnings release, and sold off shares of Infosys Ltd and Hindustan Unilever Ltd that posted weak earnings the previous day. The Nifty 50 fell 1.17%, or 234.15 points, to 19745 points, while the Sensex corrected by 1.31% or 887.64 points to 66,684.26 points. The fall would have been steeper had it not been for banks, which bucked the trend with the 12-member Bank Nifty hitting a fresh 52-week high of 46369.50.

Infosys, Tech Mahindra Ltd, Hindustan Unilever, HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd and Reliance Industries led Friday’s losses, falling between 3% and 8% on both exchanges. Infosys, which plunged 8.13% to ₹1331.60 after slashing its revenue guidance for FY24, eroded investor wealth by a whopping ₹48,931 crore, accounting for a fourth of Friday’s overall wealth loss of ₹1.96 trillion. The other big loser was RIL, which shed ₹54,872 crore.

Shares of the company, which has the second-highest weighting on Nifty after HDFC Bank, declined by 3% to ₹2538.75. The Nifty, which was barely eight points away from the 20,000-mark, could encounter some more volatility, depending on how markets react to the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank policy meetings next week, and the earnings of large companies like Reliance Industries. “We might see some more volatility going forward, but this isn’t a market to short," said Abhilash Pagaria, quant research head at Nuvama.

“Rather, it’s a buy-on-dips one. Earnings and other global events would influence the direction (of markets)." RIL’s Nifty weight stood at 10.03% on 20 July against HDFC Bank’s 14.26%. Pagaria added that with the