Sensex falls 100 points, Nifty ends below 15,850; banking, IT shares top losers

Benchmark indices ended lower in a highly volatile session on Tuesday as fag-end selling in FMCG, banking and IT stocks and weak opening in European stock markets affected investor sentiment.

Sensex declined 100.42 points to settle at 53,134.35. During the day, it jumped 631.16 points or 1.18 per cent to 53,865.93.

Nifty also gave up intra-day gains and fell 24.50 points to 15,810.85.

ITC, Wipro, Axis Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Maruti Suzuki India, IndusInd Bank and Asian Paints were among the major Sensex losers, falling up to 1.73 per cent.

Power Grid, Bajaj Finserv, Hindustan Unilever, Sun Pharma, Reliance Industries and Tata Steel were the top Sensex gainers, rising up to 1.54 per cent.

Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services said, "Domestic market had started strong by extending its yesterday's gains supported by strong macro numbers but global bourses opened weak impacting to close with marginal losses. The current trend in the global market indicates that the uncertainties around recession and tightening monetary policy continues to haunt investors' confidence. Dollar index opened sharply high affecting the performance of emerging currencies, depreciating INR."

BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices fell 77 points and rose 49 points, respectively.

Share Market Update: Sensex falls 100 pts, Nifty above 15,800; ITC, Wipro top losers

Banking and IT stocks were the top sectoral losers with their BSE indices falling 145 pts and 168 pts, respectively.

Market breadth was positive with 1,714 stocks ending higher against 1,569 stocks falling on BSE. 160 shares were unchanged.

Market cap of BSE-listed firms stood at Rs 245.32 lakh crore today against Rs 245.23 lakh crore in the previous session.

Siddhartha Khemka, Head - Retail Research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said, "Domestic indices made a positive start amid positive global cues and strong India's services PMI data which expanded the most in 11 years to 59.2 for June. Nifty opened positive and crossed 16k mark during the session. However, it fell in the last hour of the session following the weakness in European markets and US Futures. Nervousness ahead of the US Fed meeting minutes as well as expectation of weakness in the upcoming results season made investors to book out from the intraday gains. Even Indian rupee touched a new record low adding to the overall weakness in the market."

Meanwhile, rupee fell 41 paise to close at an all-time low of 79.36 against the US dollar.

In the previous session, Sensex had gained 326.84 points or 0.62 per cent to settle at 53,234.77. The Nifty rose 83.30 points or 0.53 per cent to close at 15,835.35.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) remained net sellers in the capital market as they sold shares worth Rs 2,149.56 crore on Monday, as per exchange data.

Global markets

Elsewhere in Asia, markets in Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong ended with gains, while Shanghai settled marginally lower. European bourses were trading in the negative territory in mid-session deals. The US markets were closed for a holiday on Monday. Meanwhile, international oil benchmark Brent crude declined 0.88 per cent to $112.5 per barrel.