The stock market indices fell sharply on Monday, owing to aggressive selling in energy shares.
Reliance Industries (RIL) continued to drag down the indices after the Bombay High Court’s unfavourable judgement last Monday.
While the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index, or Sensex has shed over 8 per cent in the last six trading days, RIL has plunged nearly 18 per cent during the same period.
The global cues too were also not so encouraging. While all the Asian markets, including India, opened in the green, most of them pared their gains during the day. The Strait Times and Jakarta Composite closed down slightly at 0.78 per cent and 0.28 per cent. The Nikkei and Hang Seng closed up 0.41 per cent and 0.77 per cent, respectively.
“The markets, after the recent surge from 8,000 to 15,000, needed to consolidate,” said Gul Tekchandani, investment consultant.
The Sensex closed with a loss of 195.67 points at 14,326.22. The CNX Nifty moved in the range of 130 points before closing at 4235.25, down 78.35 points. “Markets were down because of weakness in Reliance and some basket selling by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in Nifty stocks,” said Amitabh Chakraborty, head (equities), Religare Securities.
While FIIs were net sellers of Rs 300.29 crore, domestic institutional investors were net buyers of Rs 413.74 crore.
The market breadth was negative. Out of the 2,675 shares traded, 1,493 declined and 1,114 advanced. The oil & gas index led the downward rally and shed 3.33 per cent. The power, metal and realty indices were down around 2.5 per cent each. The bankex, capital goods and fast moving consumer goods were up, but less than 1 per cent.
Tata Power dropped around 4.89 per cent, followed by Grasim Industries, Reliance Infrastructure, Hindalco and RIL slipped over 4 per cent each. ICICI Bank closed up 1.84 per cent. ITC and Maruti Suzuki gained almost 1.5 per cent each.
