Markets succumb to weak Asian cues

The markets extended the previous day's losses, mirroring the weakness in the US and across Asia. The Sensex ended at 16,719, weaker by 174 points and the Nifty closed below the psychological mark of 5k at 4,987, lower by 54 points. Realty, energy and bank stocks were the major draggers.

The Dow shed 133 points (1.2%) to 10,308 and the Nasdaq dropped 27 points (1.2%) at 2,180 following a jump in weekly jobless claims. The Asian stocks ended weak across the board on concerns that banks would need to raise additional equity. The Shanghai shed more than 2% and the  Hang Seng lost nearly 1%.

Meanwhile, the government informed Parliament that India's economic expansion could exceed 7.75 per cent in this fiscal, aided by high GDP growth recorded during the July-September quarter. The economy surpassed all expectations to grow by 7.9 per cent during the second quarter.

The major losers on the Sensex were Reliance (weakened by Rs 23 or 2.2% at Rs 1010, Sterlite (lost Rs 16 or 2% at Rs 818) and ICICI Bank (closed lower by Rs 16 or 2% at Rs 808. DLF, Bharti and Hindustan Unilever were the other notable losers.

Infosys gave up Rs 34 or 1.3% after touching a 52-week high on the previous day. And Reliance Communications shed 1% at Rs 171 despite adding 2.8 million subscribers in November and thereby expanding its user base in both GSM and CDMA platforms to 91 million.

On the other hand, the largest commercial vehicle maker by sales, Tata Motors advanced by more than 3% to Rs 732 after reporting a 62% jump in total global sales in November to 75,775 units.

Sun Pharma strengthened by 0.9% at Rs 1496 and TCS added 0.6% at Rs 727.

The market breadth turned weak towards close of trade. Out of 2915 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1174 advancing stocks as against 1653 declines.

Havells India topped the value charts on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 168.64 crore, followed by DLF (Rs 167.56 crore), SBI (Rs 126.41 crore), HDIL (Rs 126.28 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 121.71 crore).

Unitech led the volume list on the BSE with trades of 13.40 million shares. This was followed by Suzlon at 11.41 million, IFCI at 5.66 million shares, Reliance Natural Resources at 5.22 million shares and DLF at 4.60 million shares.