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Sensex down 168 points

MUMBAI: The custom duty reduction on a host of items including cement, triggered heavy selling pressure on the stock market, which plunged by 168 points on Tuesday. The market sentiment was also adversely affected by the approaching end of January series on Thursday.

The Sensex, turned weak after a steady start and later dropped to the intra-day low of 14025.74 before ending at 14041.24, a fall of 1.18 per cent from the Monday's close of 14209.74.

The S&P CNX Nifty also closed lower by 36.35 points or 0.89 per cent at 4066.10 against 4102.45.

Cement stocks witnessed heavy selling pressure and ended the day with sharp losses following a reduction in custom duty on cement and the project imports by the government in a bid to check rising inflation.

Shares of State Bank of India also suffered a sharp setback after the bank announced its third quarter results. SBI posted a decline of 4.40 per cent in net profit for the quarter ended December 31.

As a result, most bank stocks registered huge falls, brokers said adding, ``profit-booking in the sector was also attributed to the possibility of a rate hike.''

Reacting to the negative development, operators reduced their long outstanding positions ahead of the expiry of derivatives contract at the weekend, they added.

Mutual funds were believed to be continuous sellers in blue-chip counters. Bharti Airtel, however, was exceptionally firm on the back of the company's better-than-expected Q3 results. The market breadth was sharply negative with 1,722 losers in the total 2,679 traded shares. — PTI

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