Nifty ends below 5900, sheds 422 points in 2 weeks; RIL dips 3.5 per cent

Equity benchmarks crashed for the second consecutive week, led by fall almost in all sectors - the Nifty shed more than 420 points in two weeks to settle below 5900 - another psychologically important level and the Sensex dropped over 1400 points. 

Vibhav Kapoor of IL&FS said the market could correct down all the way to 5,700 or 5,750. "Probably we are in a sort of a corrective phase at this point of time, which is largely due to the fact that we had run up so much over the last two-three months and we have had a pretty good year, both in terms of the market moving up by 20%, as well as the strong FII interest that we have seen to the extent of USD 25-26 billion."

"The corrective phase probably has been little bit aided by a couple of developments happened on the domestic front, little bit of the political angle added to that and the microfinance situation also added to that because that resulted into a strong correction in the banking sector, which was anyway due. There is reasonable chance that the market could correct down all the way to 5,700 or 5,750. The overall picture remains quite robust and after this corrective phase is over we should resume the bull trade," Kapoor explained.

Heavyweight Reliance Industries was the culprit behind today's fall; plunged 3.5% to close below Rs 1000 mark. It was followed by sell-off in financial, technology, realty, power, healthcare and select auto companies' shares. BHEL, ONGC, Reliance Communications also added some pressure on markets.

Even Ambreesh Baliga of Karvy Stock Broking said all positive triggers for the market seem to be over for the time being. He cautioned that the recent market momentum might be run into some stop signs. ''Going ahead, we have quite a few negative triggers,'' he pointed out.

Financials also aided this fall; the BSE Bankex fell 2%. SBI lost 2.4%; Kotak Mahindra Bank was down 4.3% and Axis Bank down 3%. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, PNB and IDFC were down 1.3-1.8%. HDFC slipped 0.7%. DLF from realty pack dropped 3.4%; the BSE Realty Index tumbled 3.8%.