Nifty ends below 4900; banks, CG, metal, FMCG stocks down

26 May 2008

The markets started the week on a weaker note and remained in favour of bears for the third consecutive day. Banking, capital goods, metal, FMCG, realty, power and auto stocks were major downers. The Nifty closed below 4900 mark and the Sensex below 16500 levels. Weak global cues also added to negative sentiments. Midcap and small cap stocks have got hammered a lot, both indices lost over 2.3%.

Market breadth was weak; about 772 shares have advanced, 2174 shares declined, and 161 shares remained unchanged.

The Sensex ended at 16,348.50, down 301.14 points or 1.81% after hitting an intraday high of 16,498.24 and low of 16,300.88. The Nifty has touched a high/low of 4953.60 and 4858.00 before closing the day at 4875.05, slipped 71.5 points or 1.45%.

The BSE Midcap and Small cap indices fell 2.54% at 6,760.77 and 2.34% at 8,318.20, respectively.

Amongst midcap space, Bajaj Holdings, South Ind Bk, Bajaj Hind, Ashapura Mine, Mercator Lines, HT Media, IVRCL Infras, Patel Eng and Shree Renuka were down over 7%. Amongst small cap segment, Alphageo, English Ind Cla, El Forge, Mercator Lines, India Glycols and Empire Ind were down over 8%.

Top losing shares on the bourses were JP Associates (-5.58%), Ambuja Cements (-5.38%), BHEL (-5.21%), Reliance Communications (-5.08%) and ICICI Bank (-4.84%) while Infosys (3.29%), Bharti Airtel (3.15%), TCS (2.69%), Sun Pharma (3.48%) and Idea Cellular (3.08%) gainers.