Sensex closes 155 points down; divestment candidates outperform

The benchmark Sensex witnessed huge selling pressure in the last one hour of trade on the back of downtrend across all the sectors barring banking. The index slipped over 155 points while the Nifty lost over 49 points at close. Weak European cues weighed on the markets in the second half of trade; CAC, DAX and FTSE were trading 0.9% lower at the time of closing of Indian equities.

However, banking and select metal stocks along with BHEL outperformed others, which helped to limit the losses. The markets traded lower along with volatility for major part of the day.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 17,486.06, down 155.02 points or 0.88% and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 0.93% or 49.20 points, to settle at 5225.65. The Nifty January future also closed in discount.

Divestment candidates continued their run-up in today's trade as well and were the most active with huge volumes; especially post the divestment secretary comments on Monday. Andrew Yule, Transport Corporation, National Fertiliser and FACT were locked at 20% upper circuit each. Rashtriya Chemical and Hindustan Copper were up nearly 19%. HMT was up 14%, ITI was up 11% and NMDC was up 5.6%. STC India gained 6%. The disinvestment secretary Sunil Mitra said in an interview to CNBC-TV18 that the government was likely to mop up more than Rs 24,000 crore in fiscal 2010.

Technology stocks were the major draggers on the back of profit booking. These stocks had rallied in last few days on better set of quarterly numbers from IT majors like TCS and Infosys. Patni Computer, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Infosys and Wipro were down 1.3-2.5%.

The sell-off was also seen in realty space; Unitech slipped 2.90% and DLF was down 1.82%. Indiabulls Real fell 1%.