Sensex ends 86 points down; capital goods, banks drag

Indian equity benchmarks continued their downward journey on Wednesday as well - amid a choppy trade. Capital goods and banking (major ones) stocks remained on sellers' radar. Heavyweight Reliance Industries too added pressure in the late trade again.

It seemed that the yesterday's rate hike (RBI had increased repo and reverse repo rates by 50 basis points yesterday) was still lingering on the market today.

The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 86 points, to close at 18,432 and the 50-share NSE Nifty declined 28 points, to end at 5,547.

Dilip Bhat, Joint MD of Prabhudas Lilladher said the market perhaps would start testing the lower levels.

"The way the interest rates have been hiked, clearly suggests that couple of things are pretty serious with all the resources at their command (RBI). Secondly he (RBI Governor) is going to tame the inflation even if it means disrupting the growth. I think both the scenarios are not very comforting for the markets. My feeling is even if the inflation has peaked out, but if it remains at those elevated levels, markets still will not be comfortable. So even if market wants to go up higher, I don't think there will be enough comfort that whether the higher levels are to be backed up by either earnings growth or a GDP growth or by PE rerating," he explained.

Even the market was too much volatile during the day ahead of F&O expiry tomorrow.