Lowest closing for Sensex since Nov 2005, Nifty below 2600

05 March 2009

It was a scary session for the markets led by cash based selling in heavyweights from oil & gas, capital goods, banking, FMCG and power sectors. Incremental flows remained negative at FII desk, they have been net sellers for the 13th consecutive day. Till now, they sold out over Rs 4,700 crore worth of equity shares.

Selling pressure continued in banking stocks for the second day in a row. The Nifty weightage stocks like Reliance Industries slipped 5% as its January crude processing was down 12.1% and ONGC lost 2% post Goldman Sachs downgrade report due to corporate governance issues. Pharma major Ranbaxy Labs plunged 9.5% on Australian Pharma Regulator probe report.

Apart from these above stocks, NTPC, ITC, BHEL, HUL, Bharti, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI, Infosys, Tata Power and L&T were leading contributors to this fall.

It was a lowest closing for the 30-share BSE Sensex since November 2005, which ended at 8206.83 on November 7, 2005. It has touched an intraday low of 8,166.97, before closing the day at 8,197.92, down 248.57 points or 2.94%. The 50-share NSE Nifty shut shop at 2576.70, down 2.59% or 68.50 points, after hitting a day's low of 2564.10.

Technical Analyst, Mathew Easow said, "Markets have gone below 2,610. Now the next major support is 2,550 to 2,570, and as each important technical support level gets broken the momentum of the panic gets more and more. If 2,540 is broken one could really see a sharp fall thereafter."

Volumes were better than last few days; total traded turnover was at Rs 58,575.38 crore. This includes Rs 8,872.25 crore from NSE cash segment, Rs 46,286.18 crore from NSE F&O and the balance Rs 3,416.95 crore from BSE cash segment.