The tape is hollowing out, not pulling back inside strength. Today's -0.5% on Nifty 50 to 23,869.6 is the fifth losing or flat session in six, and the internals underneath are deteriorating faster than the index suggests — this is a broad decline, not a dip to buy. The regime has tipped to transition with a neutral-to-down near-term read, and the weight of evidence says risk is building.
Trajectory: the internals are getting worse, not stabilising
The slow structural gauge — the share of stocks above their 200-day average — has slid from 43.8% on 16 July to 41.4% today, a steady erosion that confirms distribution is not confined to a few names. The fast short-term gauge, stocks above their 20-day average, has collapsed from 43.5% to 31.1% over the same six sessions, and today's advance-decline of 1,535 decliners to 674 advancers is the second consecutive session of roughly 2-to-1 selling pressure. The clincher: net new 52-week highs just turned negative at -13, the first negative print in this sequence, meaning more stocks are making fresh lows than fresh highs. Over the last five days, 64 stocks degraded from Stage 2 to Stage 3 against only 36 moving the other way — a net loss of 28 from the advancing cohort — and the Stage-2 share has narrowed for five straight sessions to 33.1%.
Leadership: IT and Health Care holding, but the bench is thin
Information Technology was the only sector to close in the green today, up a marginal 0.2%, and it is where the Stage-2 cohort is expanding fastest over the last 20 days, alongside Health Care — the three-month leader at +15.8% — where RPG Life Sciences cleared the screen with a high setup score. Real Estate leads on the one-month table at +8.7% and its Stage-2 cohort is also widening, but one day's relative resilience in IT does not make a healthy market when decliners are running at more than double advancers. The setups the screen surfaces today are real — Kapston Services and Kabra Extrusion Technik in Industrials sit at the top — but in a tape where new lows are outpacing new highs and the advancing cohort is contracting, the historical follow-through rate on even clean setups deteriorates materially.
| Stock | Sector | Setup | % 1D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kabra Extrusion Technik Ltd | Industrials | 9.4 | +2.9% |
| Kapston Services Ltd | Industrials | 9.4 | -0.9% |
| Tirupati Forge Ltd | Consumer Discretionary | 9.2 | -5.0% |
| RPG Life Sciences Ltd | Health Care | 9.0 | -3.4% |
| Bharat Seats Ltd | Consumer Discretionary | 9.0 | -1.6% |
| India Nippon Electricals Ltd | Consumer Discretionary | 9.0 | -0.5% |
| Filatex India Ltd | Consumer Discretionary | 9.0 | +0.4% |
| Muthoot Microfin Ltd | Financials | 9.0 | -3.6% |
| Sector | 1D | 1M | 3M | RS | Stage 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Information Technology | +0.2% | +4.2% | -3.2% | 42 | 31% |
| Consumer Discretionary | -0.1% | +2.6% | +4.0% | 68 | 35% |
| Health Care | -0.5% | +2.9% | +15.8% | 73 | 50% |
| Materials | -0.7% | +0.1% | +0.5% | 69 | 31% |
| Consumer Staples | -0.7% | +0.1% | -3.2% | 54 | 26% |
| Communication Services | -0.8% | +2.0% | +9.1% | 66 | 16% |
| Financials | -0.8% | -0.5% | -3.3% | 61 | 34% |
| Energy | -1.0% | -0.3% | -3.5% | 56 | 29% |
| Industrials | -1.1% | -3.1% | +6.4% | 69 | 37% |
| Utilities | -1.3% | -3.5% | -1.2% | 63 | 20% |
| Real Estate | -1.4% | +8.7% | +10.1% | 50 | 22% |
Work the same data live: open the full stock screener, watch the live market dashboard, or check the market-timing read. New to the method? Start with the four stages.
Stage2Stocks is an educational stage-analysis screener. These wraps describe what the screen shows across NSE cash equities — they are not investment advice, recommendations, or buy/sell calls. Always do your own research.