After opening the session on a strong note, Indian share markets witnessed volatile trading activity throughout the day today and ended lower.

Fag-end selling amid weekly (futures & options) F&O expiry, aggravated by profit-taking in financial, metal, and select auto stocks, dragged benchmark indices in the red.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood lower by 163 points (down 0.3%).

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty closed lower by 46 points (down 0.3%).

Eicher Motors and UltraTech Cement were among the top gainers today.

Hindalco Industries and Kotak Mahindra Bank, on the other hand, were among the top losers today.

The SGX Nifty was trading at 16,572, down by 31 points, at the time of writing.

The BSE MidCap index ended up by 0.3%, while the BSE SmallCap index ended down by 0.2%.

Sectoral indices ended on a negative note with stocks in the metal sector, banking sector, and realty sector witnessing most of the selling pressure.

Shares of Nestle India and Avenue Supermarts hit their respective 52-week highs today.

Asian stock markets ended on a positive note today as investors engaged in bargain hunting despite losses on Wall Street and a surge of the coronavirus Delta variant stoking fears about the global economic recovery.

The Hang Seng and the Shanghai Composite ended the day up by 0.5% and 1.1%, respectively.

The Nikkei ended up by 0.6% in today's session.

US stock futures are trading on a negative note today with the Dow Futures trading down by 86 points.

The rupee is trading at 74.24 against the US$.

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX are trading on a flat note today at Rs 47,273 per 10 grams.

Speaking of the stock market, Brijesh Bhatia, Research Analyst at Fast Profits Report, shares his three-step strategy to profitably 'buy the dip', in his latest video for Fast Profits Daily.

In news from the auto ancillaries sector, Bharat Forge was among the top buzzing stocks today.

Bharat Forge, an auto forged components manufacturer, is set to enter the electric vehicle (EV) space with two-wheelers and three-wheelers in the financial year 2022, a top company official said.

The launch, scheduled for the second half of the year, will further highlight how companies are rushing to tap the upcoming and burgeoning EV segment.

Tork Motors, an associate company, has met the subsidy requirements specified for Phase 2 of the faster adoption and manufacturing of electric vehicles (FAME-II), said Amit Kalyani, deputy managing director of Bharat Forge.

'We are happy to report that Tork Motors has achieved FAME-II homologation for multiple products, both in two- and three-wheelers and launches are being planned accordingly. We will make a detailed announcement in November,' Mr Kalyani said.

Tork Motors is a Pune-based company founded in 2009 with investments from Bharat Forge over the past few years.

Bharat Forge's stake in Tork Motors stood at almost 49% as of 31 March 2021.

In fiscal 2021, the Kalyani Group company had subscribed to additional shares in Tork with an investment of Rs 40 m.

Pune-based Bharat Forge aims to achieve 5-6% market share by 2025 in the e-mobility space (two- and three-wheelers, trucks and buses) with the help of Kalyani Powertrain (KPTL), a subsidiary set up in the first half of the year 2021 that houses the e-mobility business.

Bharat Forge's share price ended the day down by 1.1% on the BSE.

Speaking of electric vehicles, note that the power ministry has approved setting up 2,636 electric vehicle charging stations across 62 cities in 24 states.

Here's what co-head of Research at Equitymaster, Tanushree Banerjee wrote about electric vehicles in one of her editions of Profit Hunter:

• '106 public and private entities have approached the government for permissions to set up about 7,000 EV charging stations.
  
  This clearly shows the vehicle manufacturers have enough incentive to capture this latent demand.
  
  The tax benefit in terms of a lower GST rate (at 5%) is a further shot in the arm of the EV industry.'

As per Tanushree, electric vehicles are very much on their way to invading Indian roads. The threat of disruption in this era is something you cannot ignore.

Moving on to news from the mining sector...

Coal India Faced Rs 7 bn Loss in June Quarter Due to Diesel Price Hike

The country's largest coal mining firm - Coal India suffered a loss of around Rs 7 bn in the April-June quarter of the financial year 2021-22 due to a sharp increase in diesel prices during the period, according to news agency PTI.

Coal India lost around Rs 7 bn in the first quarter of the current fiscal as diesel prices increased by around 35%, according to Pramod Agarwal, Chairman, Coal India.

Diesel was in the range of Rs 66-67 and now it costs around Rs 89, which is a substantial rise for the state-owned coal mining firm.

Coal India reported a net profit of Rs 31.7 bn in the April-June quarter on a consolidated basis, compared to Rs 20.8 bn in the same period last year.

The mining major's profit grew 52% year-on-year (YoY) mostly driven by revenue and operating income.

The state-run miner has been drawing up plans to replace its diesel-run heavy machinery with LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas)-fired equipment, and adding 1,500 electric vehicles to its fleet in the next five years to support carbon emission cuts.

It targets creating a carbon offset of 2.5 lakh tonnes in the next five years.

Coal India's share price ended the day down by 0.7% on the BSE.

We will keep you posted on more updates from this space. Stay tuned.