Mumbai: The BSE Sensex snapped three-day winning streak on last session of the truncated week, falling over 0.6 per cent due to profit booking and weak global cues. Index heavyweights ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, L&T and Bharti Airtel weighed down the market while BHEL and recovery in SBI capped somewhat downside towards the close.
Traders as well as investors may have opt to profit booking due to long weekend that started tomorrow; the market will be shut on Thursday for Mahavir Jayanti and Friday for Good Friday.
Therefore, Sanjay Sinha, Founder of Citrus Advisors believes people would not like to take an exposed position in an uncertain global environment.
The BSE Sensex benchmark fell 111.40 points or 0.63 per cent, to close at 17,486.02 after rising 538 points in previous three sessions. The NSE benchmark was down 35.60 points to 5,322.90, which rallied 3.5 per cent in last three days.
According to Sinha, the correction in the market is also attributable to the Fed that has ruled out any immediate onset of QE3 and therefore the anticipated liquidity that was supposed to come into the markets from these sources, at this point of time has taken a back seat.
Global markets have been falling since Tuesday after the US Federal Reserve meeting for March indicated that hopes for US quantitative easing three had waned. European markets like France's CAC and Britain's FTSE tanked over 1 per cent while Germany's DAX lost 1.8 per cent. Even the Dow Jones futures fell nearly 100 points. Among Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei tumbled 2.3 per cent whereas Singapore's Straits Times and South Korea's Kospi were down 1-1.5 per cent.
The Indian rupee too depreciated quite sharply today, falling by 43 paise or 0.85 per cent to 51.15 a dollar.
Drop in purchasing manager's Index (PMI) too dampened the sentiment. HSBC Markit's composite PMI dropped at 53.6 in March 2012 as against 57.8 in previous month and services PMI fell to 52.3 versus 56.5 during the same period.
Country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank tanked 1.9 per cent while rival State Bank of India recovered in late trade to close down 0.3 per cent. HDFC Bank lost 0.6 per cent. Housing financing company HDFC was down 1.2 per cent.
India's most valued stock Reliance Industries slipped 0.7 per cent while state-owned ONGC was down 0.3 per cent.
Shares of telecom companies Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications were down 2 per cent each.
Jindal Steel, Jaiprakash Associates and GAIL topped the selling list, falling 3% each.
Engineering and construction company Larsen & Toubro declined nearly 1 per cent whereas state-run BHEL shot up 3.5 per cent after the company decided yesterday in its board meeting that it has withdrawn FPO papers filed with SEBI.
Declining shares outnumbered advancing by 752 to 681 on the National Stock Exchange.
IVRCL surged 2.67 per cent after the Essel Group's stake increased to 12.27 per cent from 10.19 per cent. The group acquired 55 lakh shares on April 2nd and 3rd.
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