INDIA STOCKS-Indian shares struggle for direction after two-day selloff

By Reuters News

By Bharath Rajeswaran and Vivek Kumar M

Sept 30 (Reuters) - Indian shares were muted on Wednesday as a rebound in most sectors after a two-day selloff offset sustained foreign selling and a rise in oil prices driven by the absence of a US-Iran peace deal.

Brent crude futures rose about 1% to $103.5 a barrel after US President Donald Trump denied he would be willing to ease sanctions on Iran.

The Nifty 50 .NSEI fell 0.11% to 22,691.80, while the BSE Sensex .BSESN added 0.14% to 72,630.18 as of 9:40 a.m. IST. The indexes fell about 1.8% each in the last two sessions.

"The market is attempting to stabilise after the recent decline, supported by buying emerging around the 22,650 levels," said Hitesh Tailor, technical research analyst at Choice Broking.

The near-term structure has improved towards range-bound trading to mildly bullish, he said, but added that persistent foreign investor selling remained a concern and could restrict the recovery.

Foreign investors sold shares worth 99.8 billion rupees ($1.04 billion) on a net basis on Tuesday, marking their biggest outflow in about four months. They have offloaded $2.7 billion of worth shares in September, taking the year-to-date selling to $26.75 billion.

Twelve of the 16 major sectors advanced. The broader small-caps .NIFSMCP100 and mid-caps .NIFMDCP100 added 0.7% each.

Heavyweight HDFC Bank HDBK.NS fell 1.5%, while ICICI Bank ICBK.NS and Reliance Industries RELI.NS gained 1.8% and 0.8% respectively.

Among stocks, engineering firm Power Mech Projects POMP.NS gained 3.4% after winning order worth $57.2 million from Moxie Power Generation to provide operation and maintenance services.

Molbio Diagnostics MOLB.NS jumped 7% after Jefferies initiated coverage of the med-tech company at "buy" at a price target of 1,600 rupees, implying an upside of 27%.

Power generating firm KPI Green Energy KPIG.NS rose 2.1% after securing a $211 million order to build a 500 MW/500 MWp solar photovoltaic power plant in the state of Rajasthan.

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