Nifty ends with moderate losses; ITC up 2.5 per cent

The benchmark Nifty closed with moderate losses and continued the downtrend for fourth consecutive day. Overall it was a consolidation session with a negative bias, after Thursday's sharp sell-off. Weak Asian cues also weighed on the markets.

Heavyweight Reliance Industries played a big role today again, was down another 0.6%, as its D9, one of the four promising blocks of the company in the Krishna Godavari basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast, is likely to hold only around 5.4 trillion cubic feet of gas, compared with the earlier estimate of 10.6 trillion, Reliance's partner in the field, Hardy Oil & Gas Plc, said. Hardy Oil is RIL's 10% partner in KG D9 and D3. The stock was down 2.7% yesterday ahead of above news.

Oil & gas, technology and power companies' shares witnessed selling pressure while FMCG companies' shares saw buying interest. There was a mixed trend in auto, metal, banking & financial, pharma and realty companies' shares.

The 30-shares BSE Sensex closed at 17,591.18, down 48.08 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 11 points to 5,262.60. The broader indices also closed marginally lower. The Nifty April futures also turned into discount, ended with 5.5 points premium as per provisional data. The Nifty and Sensex were down 2% each this week.

Sudarshan Sukhani of Technical Trends says, "Inspite of all the volatility, intraday and otherwise we are slowly going to drift on the downside."

On the global front, European markets were flat in trade, at the time of closing of Indian equities. Asian markets ended lower; Shanghai, Hang Seng and Nikkei fell 1.1-1.5%. Straits Times, Kospi, Taiwan and Jakarta slipped 0.3-0.75%.