The Hindu : Business : Sensex yields ground, loses 168 points

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Business

Business

Sensex yields ground, loses 168 points

Selling pressure in realty, auto and banking stocks

MUMBAI: Ending its four-day rising streak, the Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index, Sensex, moved downward due to concerns over higher interest rates and weak global cues.

The BSE 30-share index fell by 167.66 points and closed at 17410.57 on Monday against 17578.23 last Friday. Amid widespread selling pressure, 22 of the Sensex blue chips closed in the red.

Led by declines in interest rate sensitive counters, realty, auto and banking stocks triggered a fall in Monday's market.

The market traded in the red for the entire day, declining as much as 240.85 points in intra-day trade, after the central bank's surprise 25-basis point rate hike in lending and borrowing rates (repo and reverse repo) on Friday that was announced after the markets had closed.

The country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank declined 2.03 per cent to Rs. 935.45 and State Bank of India by 0.85 per cent to Rs.2041 . Reliance Industries, which carries the maximum weightage in the Sensex, dropped 1.46 per cent to close at Rs. 1,073.90. “The decline in Monday's market was on expected lines after RBI's rate hike.

A correction was long overdue as the market has run up quite a lot post the budget. The rate hike only triggered the fall,” Unicon Financial CEO Gajendra Nagpal said. The National Stock Exchange's 50-share Nifty settled lower at 5205.20 against 5262.80 last Friday. A weakening trend in the Asian region and a lower opening in Europe also dampened sentiment. Asian stocks fell on fears that other central bank's in the Asian region might raise borrowing costs to contain inflation.

The market mood was also cautious ahead of the expiry of the derivatives contract on March 25. Bucking the general weakening trend, Bharti Airtel surged 1.43 per cent to Rs. 316.30 after reports that it arranged funding for 90 per cent of the bid for Kuwaiti telecom Zain's operations.

Rupee drops further

The rupee weakened by 9 paise against the dollar and closed at 45.58/59 on Monday on a strong dollar demand from importers and weakness in stock markets after surprise rate hike by the Reserve Bank.

In lackadaisical trading at the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee trapped in a narrow range of 45.47 and 45.59 before closing at 45.58/59 against 45.49/50 last Friday. — PTI

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business