Nifty slides for 5th consecutive day, but ends over 5000

The benchmark Nifty continued to see selling pressure for the 5th consecutive day, on the back of downtrend in private banking, metal, technology, auto, realty and cement stocks along with heavyweight Reliance Industries. It showed recovery around 2 pm but that could not sustain for long; it broke the 5,000 mark in the opening trade but managed to close above the same level.

However, some recovery was led by buying in FMCG and capital goods stocks. Bharti Airtel, NTPC, ONGC, SBI and Sun Pharma were the other leading stocks.

Weak global cues also weighed on the markets; Asian markets closed 0.3-1% lower. European markets were trading marginally lower, at the time of closing of Indian equities. The US markets lost 2-3% on Friday but 0.7-0.9% rise in US index futures was pointing positive opening on the Wall Street today.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 16,780.46, down 79.22 points or 0.47%, after seeing an intraday low of 16,705.56. The 50-share NSE Nifty touched a day's low of 4,983.05, before closing at 5,007.90, down 0.56% or 28.10 points.

Today's big earning was Mahindra & Mahindra, which bottomline numbers were better-than-expectations while the topline was just below the estimates. Its Q3 net profit rose 276.09% to Rs 413.7 crore and net sales increased 78.7% to Rs 4,478.7 crore. The company sees margins under pressure on rising commodity prices. The board has approved 2-for-1 stock split. The stock fell 5.2%. Among other auto stocks, Bajaj Auto, Apollo Tyres, Bharat Forge, Ashok Leyland, Hero Honda and Tata Motors were down 1.3-3.4% while Maruti was flat, which reported better-than-expected numbers on Saturday.

HCL Tech also reported the numbers today, which were in-line with the estimates but margin dipped mainly on account of salary hikes, rupee movement. The voice based business was also down from 100% to 50%. The stock lost 5.6%.