Moneycontrol Bureau
Bears mauled bulls at Dalal Street again on Thursday. Benchmark indices hit new 2015 lows today with the Nifty cracking 8000-mark intraday, dragged by banks and oil stocks. However, IT bucked the trend due to weak rupee that went past 64 to dollar level on consistent sell off by foreign institutional investors (FIIs).
The recovery in late trade (led by short covering) cut down the day’s losses by more than half. The 30-share BSE Sensex fell as much as 293 points intraday, before closing at 26599.11, down 118.26 points. The 50-share NSE Nifty ended 39.70 points lower at 8057.30 after hitting an intraday low of 7997.15, continuing the fall for the third consecutive session.
Experts believe the major factors that contributing to this fall are consistent ambiguity over GST & Land Bills and MAT concerns, which forcing FIIs to shift money from India to other Asian countries.
Adrian Mowat of JP Morgan said India has lost its favoured emerging market tag. However, this is a routine correction in a bull market and a lot of consensus trades are unwinding globally, he added.
The broader markets underperformed benchmarks with the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices falling 2 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively. More than two shares declined for every share advancing on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Foreign institutional investors sold shares worth nearly Rs 1,700 crore on Wednesday, in addition to their Rs 756 crore worth of shares sell off in previous session.
The Indian rupee hit a fresh 20-month low today, breaching 64 a dollar mark weighed down by global debt sell off, weak equity markets and government's taxation policies. The currency slipped 69 paise to 64.23 a dollar, the lowest closing level since September 9, 2013.
Globally, Asian stocks extended their decline. Shanghai fell 2.77 percent, seeing third day of fall while Hang Seng has fallen 351 points. Morgan Stanley downgraded the MSCI China Index to equal weight from overweight, marking the first downgrade in seven and half years. European markets like FTSE, CAC and DAX were down 1-1.6 percent (at 16 hours IST). UK went to polls in an election that has widely been touted as 'too close to call.' Opinion polls still put conservative leader and UK Prime Minister David Cameron neck to neck with labour leader Ed Miliband. There may be high possibility of hung parliament.
Back home, the Bank Nifty saw a sharp fall of almost 3 percent today as top lenders State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank were down 1.5-3 percent.
ONGC shed 3 percent followed by Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, Dr Reddy’s Labs, Hindalco Industries and Tata Power with 2-2.5 percent losses.
However, Hero Motocorp will report Q4 earnings later in the day. The two-wheeler maker is expected to report a lacklustre quarter, courtesy falling volumes. Topline is expected to grow just 1.2 percent while profit may rise 18 percent over last year as the company has stopped paying royalty to Honda. The stock gained 1.2 percent.
TCS topped the buying list on Sensex, up 3 percent. ITC, Infosys, Bajaj Auto, Coal India and Wipro gained 1-2 percent.
Aviation stocks like Jet Airways and SpiceJet fell 6-9 percent on rising crude oil prices. Brent crude gained 0.4 percent at USD 68 a barrel.
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