Nifty closes below 4250; commodities, telecom drag

The benchmark indices retreated after Friday's gain. Today's fall could be attributed to drop in commodities prices in international markets and weak global cues. The sell-off in oil & gas, metal, cement, realty, telecom, power and select banking stocks pushed the Nifty below the 4250 mark.

The markets had started on a positive note but after an hour of trade, both the indices turned volatile with negative bias. They lost ground further in the last one hour of trade. The 50-share NSE Nifty closed at 4235.25, down 1.82% or 78.35 points, after seeing a day's low of 4221.90. The 30-share BSE Sensex has touched an intraday low of 14,269.77, before closing at 14,326.22, down 195.67 points or 1.35%.

Reliance Industries, NTPC, ONGC, Bharti, SAIL, TCS, SBI, Reliance Communication, DLF, Reliance Infrastructure and Tata Power were draggers in today's trade.

Deven Choksey of KR Choksey Securities said if the Nifty breaks below 4,200 levels then 4,150 on the downside would be a good possibility; otherwise it has a resistance of 4,450. He said one should trade this range till the Budget and full clarity coming back into the markets.

Reliance Industries fell another 4% after losing over 13% in the last week. Choksey said, "Reliance is going to drag the market till the time Supreme Court (SC) gives complete clarity on its judgement and I think that is an area which we are going to be carefully hereafter in coming days and months."

On the next page - Sectoral indices, Turnover, Global cues