Sensex slips 5.5 per cent this week, ends below 16000; telecom cracks

Bears reigned the markets for the whole week and hammered the Sensex, which closed below the 16,000 mark for the first time in 36 sessions. The markets had opened higher following strong US and Asian cues but witnessed selling pressure in the second half of trade. The Nifty also touched the 4,700 mark during the day.

The sell-off in shares of oil & gas exploration, telecom, power (barring NTPC), capital goods, FMCG and select technology companies exerted pressure on the markets while buying in auto, cement, select banking and metal stocks capped the losses to some extent. Volumes remained above the Rs 1 lakh crore mark for the fourth day in a row. The Nifty futures turned in discount after a long time.

The 30-share BSE Sensex declined 156.44 points or 0.97%, to settle at 15,896.28, after seeing a fall of 464.6 points loss from its day's high of 16,360.88. The 50-share NSE Nifty touched an intraday low of 4687.50 and corrected nearly 142 points from its day's high of 4853.65. It slipped 0.82% or 38.85 points, to close at 4711.70. The benchmark indices plunged 5.44% and 5.7% in five days, respectively.

In a crucial fallout of Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) probe into the alleged 2G spectrum allocation scam, work on allocation of spectrum to all existing operators - including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar, Idea, Reliance Communications among others - has stopped at the Department of Telecom (DoT), reports CNBC-TV18's. Reliance Communication, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular plunged 6-7.4%. Bharti Airtel is awaiting 2G Spectrum in 10 circles.

Another factor was Bharti Airtel's Q2 numbers, which were disappointing. The company's net profit declined 7.8% to Rs 2,321 crore and total revenues slipped 0.97% to Rs 9,845 crore, QoQ while CNBC-TV18 expected net profit at Rs 2,401.2 crore and total revenues at Rs 10,218.4 crore.

Sanjay Chawla of Anand Rathi Securities said, "The mobile segment results are almost mirroring what Idea has reported. So, in that sense we were not surprised given that Idea's numbers were also weak and the stock has already reacted, there was little room for disappointment. But having said that, on an absolute basis, the numbers are quite weak."