Sensex, Nifty post first weekly fall in over a month, Reliance drags
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Sensex, Nifty post first weekly fall in over a month, Reliance drags

By Reuters

  • 31 Jul 2020
Sensex, Nifty post first weekly fall in over a month, Reliance drags
Credit: Reuters

Indian shares posted their first weekly decline in more than a month on Friday due to a selloff in Reliance Industries, but gains in State Bank of India and pharma stocks kept losses in check.

The NSE Nifty 50 index fell 0.26% to 11,073.45 and the S&P BSE Sensex dropped 0.34% to 37,606.89. For the week, the NSE and BSE indexes slid for the first time since mid-June by 1.08% and 1.37%, respectively.

On a monthly basis, however, Nifty and Sensex were up 7.5% and 7.7%, respectively.

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Shares of Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company, fell as much as 2.7% in the session, after the company's revenue from operations fell almost 44% as the coronavirus crisis slammed its refining and petrochemicals businesses.

The conglomerate's stock had gained for eight out of the last 10 sessions and saw its market capitalization cross 13 trillion rupees ($174.01 billion) during that time.

State Bank of India (SBI), India's biggest lender by assets, rose as much as 4.4% after its profit surged and bad-loan provisioning fell in the quarter to June.

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SBI's results boosted the Nifty state-owned banking index up 1.2%.

The country's biggest drugmaker Sun Pharma also rose as much as 6% after its results, helping the Nifty pharma index gain nearly 4% in the session.

Sun Pharma's rival Cipla rose over 5% and topped the Nifty gainers. Smaller drugmakers Laurus Labs and Torrent Pharma advanced 19% and 13%, respectively, after they reported strong results.

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Bus and motorcycle maker Eicher Motors was the top laggard, falling 2.74%, while large shadow lender HDFC shed 1.6%.

India's coronavirus cases surged by over 55,000 in the past 24 hours to 1.64 million, government data showed. A Reuters poll published on Wednesday said the outlook for Asia's third-largest economy has worsened as business activity slows due to infections.

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