POST MARKET
Indian benchmark indices ended higher for the third consecutive session on February 18, amid volatile trade, with the Nifty above 25,800, supported by broad-based buying across sectors, while IT stocks remained the sole laggard.
At close,
Sensex ↑ up 283.29 points or 0.34 percent at 83,734.25,
Nifty↑up 93.95 points or 0.37 percent at 25,819.35.
About 2135 shares advanced, 1902 shares declined, and 172 shares were unchanged.
Top gainers – Tata Steel, HDFC Life, ITC, Tata Consumer, Bajaj Auto
Top losers – ONGC, Eternal, Wipro, Infosys, Adani Enterprises.
On the sectoral front, except IT (down 1.2), all other indices ended higher with metal, FMCG, PSU Bank indices up 1% each, while Private Bank, realty, auto, oil & gas up 0.5% each.
The broader indices remained relatively stable during the session and outperformed the main indices, with the Nifty Midcap and Nifty Smallcap indices rising 0.5% each.
STOCKS IN NEWS
Dilip Buildcon
Dilip Buildcon’s share price rose almost 4 percent on February 18 after the company announced that it had been declared the lowest bidder for a tender floated by the Narmada Water Resources, Water Supply & Kalpasar Department, Government of Gujarat.
Godfrey Phillips
The shares of cigarette-maker Godfrey Phillips surged 20 percent on February 18, extending gains amid reports of price hikes. UBS has issued a bullish call for ITC shares, stating that the valuation now appears to be appealing after the recent correction.
Aurobindo Pharma
The shares of Aurobindo Pharma plunged 1.5 percent on February 18 amid reports of nine significant observations by the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) at its Unit 7 manufacturing facility in Telangana.
Wipro
The shares of Indian IT company Wipro snapped a two-session gaining streak and dropped 1.64 percent on February 18. This came after a global tech selloff in software stocks as Anthropic’s launch of Claude Sonnet 4.6 for both free and paying users rekindled worries around AI-led disruption in the sector.
E2E Networks
Shares of E2E Networks rose 12.90 percent on February 18 as Nvidia said the firm is building an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU cluster on its TIR platform, hosted at the L&T Vyoma Data Center in Chennai.
Ola Electric Mobility
The shares of Ola Electric jumped almost 1 percent on February 18 after the company clarified that the Bombay High Court at Goa has stayed an arrest warrant issued against its CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal by the District Consumer Commission of South Goa.
Source – Moneycontrol
