Domestic equities plunge on profit booking

New Delhi, Jan 25: Domestic equities continued with its profit booking trend and plunged once again on monthly F&O expiry day before recovering half of the losses towards the end, Siddhartha Khemka, Head - Retail Research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, said.

Nifty fell more than 200 points during the day but ended the day with loss of 101 points (- 0.5 per cent) to close at 21,352. Broader market however ended on a mixed note with Midcap 100 down --0.5 per cent while Smallcap100 was up 0.5 per cent.

IT, Pharma and FMCG witnessed selling pressure while oil & gas, realty and PSUs saw buying interest.

Weak results from Tech Mahindra, Axis Bank and HDFC bank continue to weigh on IT and private banks.

FIIs have been mostly sellers in the month of Jan having sold more than 30,000 so far, he said.

Nagaraj Shetti, Senior Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities said the short-term trend of Nifty remains choppy with weak bias.

The market could encounter strong resistance around 21,500-21,600 levels in the coming sessions.

Any weakness from here could find support around 21,100-21,000 levels in the near term.