Nifty closes below 4600; RIL, ONGC, Bharti, NTPC, L&T drag

The Sensex has seen weak closing for the fourth consecutive session on the back of sell-off in heavyweights. It lost ground in late trade, after trading in positive territory since morning. But equity benchmarks witnessed volatility throughout the day for the second day running.

Shares of oil & gas exploration, capital goods, pharma, private financial, select auto and power companies witnessed selling pressure. Heavyweight Bharti Airtel also added some pressure. However, continued buying in realty, metal and oil marketing companies' shares along with Infosys, SBI and Suzlon Energy capped the losses to some extent.

Reliance Communication surged over 5% for the second straight day ahead of its subsidiary Reliance Infratel's (tower business) IPO. According to sources, it was going to file IPO papers with SEBI again and the company was also talking to investors for valuation of its tower business via pre-IPO placement. Experts believe that Reliance Communication has been trading at a big discount to its peers. SP Tulsian of sptulsian.com said, "If you compare Reliance Comm with its peers, it has been rolling at quite a low value. So in this falling market people have been seeing the value maybe with the renewed interest or maybe with the increased improvement in the valuations of telecom company coupled with the Reliance Infratel."

Oil marketing companies witnessed buying interest today as well; BPCL surged 2.58%; IOC and HPCL were up 0.5-0.8%.

The 50-share NSE Nifty closed below the 4600 mark, after staying above the same level for last eight sessions. It shut shop at 4593.55, down 0.32% or 14.80 points, and lost 54 points from day's 4647.35. The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 69.13 points or 0.45%, to settle at 15,398.33; it slipped nearly 200 points from intraday high of 15,598.18. They plunged 2.93%% and 3.29% in four days, respectively.

Tulsian said, "The market needs a trigger and I don't think that you have anything lined up atleast till September 14-15. The earlier trigger could be in the form of advance tax payment which will get to know on September 15-16. And by the time we will be having clarity on the monsoon, which has been catching up or trying to cover up the deficit." "We may see the market moving in the narrow range with a negative bias to the extent of as high as 500-700 points on the Sensex. So that could be the call for next one week for the traders."