After a day's breather, Indian stocks continued their downslide today with benchmark Sensex tumbling 229.09 points to six-week low of 27,602.01 on sharp losses in RIL and ONGC after further drop in crude oil price.
Similarly, the 50-issue CNX Nifty of the NSE also plunged by 62.75 points, or 0.75 per cent, to end below 8,300-mark for the first time after one and half months at 8,292.90.
In line fall in local equities, the Indian rupee fell to nine-month low levels of 62.3 against the greenback.
Weak Asian trends on the back of overnight steep fall on Wall Street amid slow down in capital inflows weighed on the stock market sentiment here.
Besides Oil&Gas, realty, IT, power and banking counters also suffered heavy losses while only some of the defensive pharma stocks attracted some buying interest.
Besides RIL and ONGC, Infosys, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, TCS, Tata Steel, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Power and Gail India suffered marked losses.
Brent crude oil fell to five-year low below USD 65 a barrel, putting pressure on oil companies.
The BSE 30-share barometer resumed lower on weak Asian cues and moved in negative terrain throughout the day before concluding at 27,602.01, a fall of 229.09 points or 0.82 per cent. This is its weakest close since 27,346.33 on October 30.
Yesterday, Sensex had snapped a three-day falling trend as it recovered by about 34.09 points or 0.12 per cent.
"Weak Asian markets and fresh fears from Euro region kept Indian markets volatile. Mixed sentiments on the back of weak rupee and lower oil too added to the volatility. FII liquidity outflow on the back of profit booking too added to weakness," said Hiren Dhakan, Associate Fund Manager, Bonanza Portfolio.
Investors were also cautious ahead of the release of Consumer Price Index-based inflation and Index of Industrial Production scheduled on Friday.
A total 11 out of 12 BSE sectoral barometers ended in the red. Market breadth was weak as about 1,750 stocks fell, 1,139 rose and about 100 ended flat.
Bucking the overall weak trend, sugar stocks were in limelight after government fixed higher price for ethanol procurement by PSU oil firms.
