Nifty ends below 3,000: Oil, CG, bank, metal tumble

23 December 2008

The benchmark indices continued to reel under selling pressure for the second consecutive day and ended the day with sharp cut. Sell-off was seen across the board in today's trade and even midcap and small cap stocks also followed the similar trend. There was some volatility at lower levels ahead of F&O expiry of December series.

Steep decline in Asian markets, due to slump in shares prices of energy companies, was another reason, which pushed the markets lower. Selling was mainly led by oil, banking, auto, capital goods, metal and technology stocks.

The Nifty had slipped below 3000 mark in early trade and remained below the same level for major part of the day. It has touched an intraday low of 2957.05, before closing the day at 2968.65, down 2.32% or 70.65 points from previous close. The Sensex shut shop with a loss of 241.60 points or 2.43% at 9,686.75, after hitting a low of 9,643.56.

Oil & gas stocks were the main laggards in today's trade, especially oil exploration companies, as Crude fell to USD 39.2 a barrel on the NYMEX. BSE Oil & Gas Index fell 142.86 points or 2.29% to 6,106.34 (Also See : Top Losers). ONGC went down 3% and Reliance Industries down 1.92%. Oil marketing companies like BPCL was down 0.07 while IOC gained 1.18% and HPCL down 0.46%.

Realty index underperformed other indices, lost 4.84% or 122.26 points to 2,406.38. Unitech was down 7.54% and DLF fell 4.40%.

Banking was another sector, which helped this fall. Bankex tumbled 206.69 points or 3.76%, to settle at 5,285.09. ICICI Bank, PNB and HDFC Bank plummeted 4%. SBI fell 0.81%.