Sensex down 62 points, banks stocks tank

Mumbai, August 7: A day after it touched a two-week high, a barometer index of the Indian equity markets closed in the red on Friday. The continuing logjam in parliament, an impending US rate hike decision and other negative global cues led to the barometer 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the S&P Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) ending the day’s trade 62 points down. The wider 50-scrip Nifty of the tiol Stock Exchange (NSE) also closed in the negative territory. It was down 24 points or 0.28 percent at 8,564.60 points. The S&P BSE Sensex, which opened at 28,327.11 points, closed at 28,236.39 points — down 61.74 points or 0.22 percent from the previous day’s close at 28,298.13 points.

The Sensex touched a high of 28,335.67 points and a low of 28,193.93 points in the intra-day trade. Alysts said Indian markets opened positively tracking the SGX Nifty and was buoyed by the previous gains made by the capital goods, banking and automobile stocks. “The markets consolidated after a healthy rally in the past couple of days. With no further domestic cues and a stalemate in parliament, investors were seen reluctant to chase higher prices,” And James, co-head, technical research, Geojit BNP Paribas, told IANS.

“Cues from European and Chinese markets were not conducive for the markets. On Thursday, the Wall Street traded lower. UK-based FTSE 100 index also closed lower after a vote rejected the proposal to increase interest rates there.”

According to James, markets were also awaiting the release of the US non-farm payroll data. The data point is significant — if it shows recovery in the US economy, then the US Fed is likely to raise interest rates in September. With higher interest rates in the US, the FPIs (Foreign Portfolio Investors) are expected to be led away from emerging markets such as India. Gaurav Jain, director with Hem Securities said that markets reacted with disappointment on the earnings released by the state-run BHEL and profit booking in select banks, fincial and pharma stocks.

“Investors preferred to book profit ahead of key US marco economic data which will be released tonight,” Jain said. Sector-wise, healthy buying was observed in oil and gas, consumer durables and automobile stocks. However, banking, capital goods, metal, healthcare and power sectors came under selling pressure. The S&P BSE oil and gas index increased by 192.49 points, followed by consumer durables index which gained 52.53 points and automobile index was higher by 13.29 points. The S&P BSE banking index receded by 161.64 points, capital goods index declined by 89.97 points, metal index decreased by 80.88 points, healthcare index was lower by 57.80 points and power index fell by 30.74 points.

Major Sensex gainers during Friday’s trade were ONGC, up 4.42 percent at Rs.282.30; Tata Motors, up 2.52 percent at Rs.392.55; Vedanta, up 2.01 percent at Rs.129.45; Hindalco Inds, up 0.92 percent at Rs.109.60; and Sun Pharma, up 0.59 percent at Rs.851.50. The major Sensex losers were: BHEL, down 5.81 percent at Rs.265.80; Coal India, down 3.61 percent at Rs.415.55, State Bank of India (SBI), down 2.38 percent at Rs.281.40; Bajaj Auto, down 1.46 percent at Rs.2,537.85; and NTPC, down 1.33 percent at Rs.133.85. Among the Asian markets, Japan’s Nikkei was up 0.29 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was higher by 0.73 percent. Chi’s Shanghai Composite Index gained by 2.26 percent. In Europe, the London FTSE 100 index inched up by 0.05 percent. Germany’s DAX Index lost 0.22 percent and French CAC 40 was down by 0.28 percent at the closing bell here.(IANS)