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Daily market wrap · Tuesday, 25 August 2026
~2 min read

Nifty +0.5% but decliners won — breadth eroding

The index held; the internals didn't. Two straight sessions of decliners beating advancers says this is not a dip inside strength.
Stage2Stocks Market Desk
Nifty 50
24,335
+0.5% on the day
Regime
Weak but recovering
12th day · neutral-to-up
Breadth
43%
above 200-DMA · narrow
Adv / Dec
1,043 / 1,451
decliners ahead
52w highs / lows
165 / 114
net +51
Stage-2 share
35%
cohort widening

Nifty 50 closed at 24,334.6, up half a percent, but decliners beat advancers 1,451 to 1,043 — the headline flatters the tape. The fast short-term breadth has slipped from 44.5% to 43.7% over the past two sessions, net new highs collapsed from 97 to 51, and the Stage-2 cohort has shed 2.9 points over five days. This is breadth eroding under a steady index, not a dip inside strength — treat the surface as a facade until participation recovers.

Trajectory: the internals are telling a different story

The slow structural breadth — the share of stocks above their 200-day average — dropped sharply from 47% on 21 August to 42.5% today, a move that typically takes weeks to reverse and signals genuine deterioration in the underlying trend, not noise. The fast short-term gauge peaked at 45.6% on 21 August and has slid every session since; advancers have lost to decliners in four of the last six sessions, and net new highs have more than halved from their recent peak of 97 to just 51 today. The regime has already shifted from bull rising to weak but recovering, and nothing in the last two sessions suggests the recovery is gaining traction — the index is holding, but the market beneath it is quietly rolling over.

Leadership: narrow and concentrated

Communication Services led on the day at +1.3% and remains the strongest sector over both one and three months; Health Care and Financials added modest gains but the advance was thin. The Stage-2 cohort is expanding fastest in Consumer Staples, Energy, and Materials — defensive and commodity-adjacent pockets, not the broad cyclical participation you want to see in a healthy advance. Avadh Sugar and Energy cleared the screen with the highest setup score among Consumer Staples names, consistent with that sector's expanding Stage-2 cohort, but in a tape where decliners are winning and structural breadth is falling, even clean setups carry a lower completion rate than the scores alone suggest.

Leading Stage-2 setups
StockSectorSetup% 1D
Marine Electricals (India) LtdIndustrials10.0
Ratnaveer Precision Engineering LtdIndustrials9.8
Avadh Sugar & Energy LtdConsumer Staples9.6
Universal Cables LtdIndustrials9.4
Marksans Pharma LtdHealth Care9.4
Restaurant Brands Asia LtdConsumer Discretionary9.4
Shivalik Bimetal Controls LtdMaterials9.4
KRN Heat Exchanger and Refrigeration LtdIndustrials9.3
Sector performance — cap-weighted, ranked by today’s move
Sector1D1M3MRSStage 2
Communication Services+1.3%+6.6%+11.3%6221%
Health Care+0.7%+2.2%+9.7%7050%
Financials+0.5%+1.4%+1.9%5836%
Utilities+0.4%-3.5%-6.9%5624%
Industrials+0.4%+3.6%+6.0%6934%
Information Technology+0.3%+3.3%+5.4%4829%
Consumer Discretionary+0.3%+5.6%+12.5%6438%
Energy+0.2%+1.9%-1.8%5834%
Consumer Staples+0.2%-1.1%-0.5%4832%
Real Estate+0.0%+2.7%+15.8%5626%
Materials-0.2%+2.5%+0.2%6436%
Breadth note
165 stocks are at or near new 52-week highs today — broad participation.
Work the same data live: open the full stock screener, watch the live market dashboard, or check the market-timing regime 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.

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