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The Indian stock market extended its bull run for the third straight trading session on Wednesday, February 04, but finished with marginal gains as a sharp sell-off across tech stocks weighed on the key averages, which had logged their biggest intraday rally in Tuesday's session in over nine months, powered by India–US trade deal optimism.

Following a range-bound trade, the Nifty 50 concluded the session 0.19% higher at the 25,776 level, while the S&P Sensex closed at 83,817, up 0.09% from the previous close.

The broader markets, however, outperformed the benchmark indices, with the Nifty Midcap 100 rallying 0.6% and the Nifty Smallcap 100 advancing another 1.2%.

Tech stocks saw heavy bleeding in trade, with blue-chip stocks crashing up to 8% after US-based Anthropic launched new plug-ins for its Claude Cowork agent to automate tasks across legal, sales, marketing, and data analysis—areas traditionally serviced by software firms and IT service providers.

Tracking the losses among heavyweights, the Nifty IT index shed 6%, its worst intraday fall in four years, and emerged as the top sectoral laggard. During the same period last year, domestic tech stocks had also seen heavy selling following China’s launch of the low-cost AI model DeepSeek, which led to a 12.6% decline in the index during February.

Apart from IT, all major sectoral indices closed in the green, with Nifty Consumer Durables gaining 2.66%, while the Nifty Oil & Gas, Nifty Metal, and Nifty Auto indices rallied 2%, 1.27%, and 1.18%, respectively.

Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Investments, said, “The markets overall upside remained limited due to weakness in IT stocks amid concerns over reduced demand for traditional outsourcing following Anthropic’s introduction of new AI‑driven automation tools. Going forward, market sentiment will largely be guided by the upcoming RBI policy decision and greater clarity on the newly announced US–India trade agreement."

eClerx Services emerged as the top laggard among Nifty 500 stocks, falling 8.4% to ₹4,531 apiece. It was followed by other tech majors, including Infosys, TCS, Coforge, LTIMindtree, Persistent Systems, Hexaware Technologies, Mphasis, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Oracle Financial Services, Wipro, and Sonata Software, all closing with deeper cuts ranging between 3.5% and 7.5%.

Latent View Analytics shares also came under pressure as the recent five-day rally appeared to have prompted investors to lock in gains, triggering a 7.65% drop to ₹435 apiece. Despite the decline, the stock is still up around 7% in February so far.

Defence major Hindustan Aeronautics closed 4% lower after a report said the state-owned company is no longer in the race to develop India’s next-generation stealth fighter jet.

After a bumper rally in the previous session, PCBL Chemical shares erased most of the gains, slipping 5.6% to ₹283 apiece. Other stocks such as Info Edge (India), Century Plyboards, Cohance Lifesciences, Vardhman Textiles, Hitachi Energy India, Mankind Pharma, Sundram Fasteners, and Bosch also closed with losses of over 3%.

(more to come)

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