Sensex ends 116 points down; ONGC, SBI, L&T, ICICI Bk drag
06 Jan 2011
Equity benchmarks dropped for the third consecutive session on Thursday, dragged down by banking, realty, auto, FMCG, PSU oil & gas and cement companies' shares. The NSE Nifty settled below 6050 level. Vijay Bhambwani of bsplindia.com sees the first immediate support for Nifty at 6030 and then 5960.
Rate sensitives remained on sellers' radar due to news that RBI may hike key rates in policy meet. Bharat Shah, Director of ASK Investment Managers Private Limited said banking business would by and large hold up but there could be some amount of impact due to the interest rate changes which have occurred in last weeks. "I don't think there will be a huge impact especially for well managed banks but for others there can be some amount of impact," he said.
India's largest lenders SBI and ICICI Bank were down 2.6% & 1.5%, respectively. IDFC tanked 3%; Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC and PNB slipped 0.2-0.85% while HDFC Bank gained 0.85%.
Even DLF from realty segment lost 1.5%. Auto space followed the same trend; Bajaj Auto cracked 3.4% and Maruti lost 2.7% (company is likely to increase car prices). Tata Motors was down 1.7% and Hero Honda down 0.9%.
Losses were limited today because of buying in Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, Sun Pharma, Hindalco, HDFC Bank and Tata Steel along with technology and power companies' shares.
The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 20,184.74, with loss of 116.36 points or 0.57% and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 31.55 points or 0.52% to settle at 6,048.25. The broader indices like BSE Midcap and Smallcap declined one percent each.
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