The Sensex closed below the 19,000 mark on the first trading day of the week on the back of selling pressure witnesed in the banking and consumer durables space. The BSE benchmark index closed around the day's low of 18,955, down 269 points from the day's opening. The Nifty closed down 48 points at 5,701 while the Sensex shed 137 points to end the day at 18,998. This is in stark contrast to the Asian and European markets which are trading in the green.
Earlier in the day, the markets opened in the green tracking firm Asian peers, but immediately turned negative few minutes after opening as investors sold banking shares ahead of Reserve Bank of India's policy announcement tomorrow. Thereon the downtrend continued through the morning. However, in the late morning trades the markets staged a partial recovery on the back of buying interest seen in the realty and health care space.
Meanwhile, market heavyweight, Reliance Industries which has been moving south since the past few days played spoil sport once again during the partial recovery phase dragging the Sensex further down. The markets registered fresh intra-day lows through the afternoon session.However, there is some positive news from the industrial production data. Led by crude oil and finished steel, the output of the six core infrastructure industries grew by 7.4% in March, 2011, an improvement from the 6.8% expansion recorded a year ago.
Navneet Daga, Derivative Analyst, KR Choksey Securities said, "Options data is indicating a further decline on the index to sub 5629 levels and 5600 may act as support because it has maximum open interest build up." Daga added, "If Nifty fails to hold above 5750 on closing basis for next two to three sessions, we may see selling pressure getting intense in the market towards 5620 levels and a close below 5750 would lead to further long liquidation of positions."
Among the sectoral indices, rate sensitive Bankex index lead the losses followed by Consumer Durables and Oil & Gas which shed nearly 1.5% each. Economists expect 25-50 bps rate hike on Tuesday as food prices continue to remain at elevated levels. Among the banking scrips, Bank of India down nearly 8% was the top loser. Earlier in the afternoon, the company had reported a 15.5% increase in its net profit to Rs 493.6 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2011, compared to Rs 427.9 crore of the year-ago period. The other losers were Canara Bank, SBI and Union Bank which lost between 4-6%
The top gainers among the Sensex stocks in an otherwise negative market were Tata Power (Rs 1335) and Cipla (Rs 315) down nearly 2% each followed by DLF (Rs 226), Bharti Airtel (Rs 384) and Infosys (Rs 2923) which gained between 0.6 - 1%
Apart from banking scrips, the losers on the Sensex for the day were Sterlite (Rs 177), Maruti Suzuki (Rs 1291), Bajaj Auto (Rs 1432) down 2%, RIL (Rs 964), Mahindra & Mahindra (Rs 741), ONGC (Rs 304), ICICI Bank (Rs 1098) ,Hindustan Unilever (Rs 281) and Jindal Steel (Rs 646) lost 1% each.
The market breadth was negative. Of the total 2948 stocks traded on the BSE, 1810 stocks declined while 1032 advanced.