A man looks at the stock’s ticker outside the Bombay Stock Exchange building. (Image: PTI)
The key equity indices — Sensex and Nifty — again edged lower and fell into negative territory on Wednesday after gaining phenomenally in the early morning trade. BSE Sensex lost as much as 204 points to hit the day’s low of 31,396.5 points and NSE Nifty shaved off 67 points to mark the day’s low of 9,804.8 points. The pessimism continued amid the market participants as the tensions in the Korean peninsula remain elevated and the risk grew for a US Federal Reserve to hike the interest rate in December.
The stock of the heavyweights companies such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, Hindustan Unilever, Sun Pharma contributes the most to the Sensex decline. Collectively these five stocks alone washed off more than 100 points out of the 150 point slump in the index while shares of TCS, ITC, and Hero MotoCorp helped to trim the losses. The 30-share barometer Sensex was trading 0.53% lower at 31,429.38 points. Shares of TCS (up 0.97%), ITC (up 0.48%), Power Grid (up 0.36%), Hero MotoCorp (up 0.35%), and Bharti Airtel (0.26%) were the only gainers in Sensex whereas Sun Pharma, Adani Ports, Coal India, Hindustan Unilever, Wipro lost up to 3%.
Sensex and Nifty opened higher on Tuesday, snapping the dull trade since Friday last week. BSE Sensex gained 185 points to open at 31,678.94 points and NSE Nifty added 49 points to start at 9,920.6 points. Within minutes of trading both the key indices pared most of the opening gains, the benchmark Sensex tossed 31,797.46 – 31,568.81 points while the broader Nifty 50 made a low of 9,858.45 points.
US stocks ended flat on Tuesday even as technology shares bounced from sharp losses in the prior session and comments from Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen boosted expectations of a December rate hike. Janet Yellen said the Federal Reserve needs to continue gradual rate hikes and it would be imprudent to leave rates on hold until inflation reaches the Fed’s 2-% target. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.05% to 22,286.04 points, the S&P 500 gained 0.01% to 2,496.94 points and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.15% to 6,380.16 points.
