Monsoon delay dampens market, Sensex falls 77 pts

After a positive close on Wednesday, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive Index, or Sensex, slipped today as investors squared off positions on the concluding day of the derivatives series.

Market experts said that rollovers in the futures and options (F&O) segment were quite low. Only 19.7 million shares were rolled over in the July series as against 26.9 million in the June series, clearly reflecting that traders chose to stay light before the Union Budget.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers of Rs 1,482.82 crore, whereas domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers of Rs 1,118.05 crore, according to the provisional data from the BSE.

In the morning, Asian markets took the cue from the US Federal Reserve’s reassurance that interest rates would be kept at a record low for a while. Yesterday, Fed had said that the world's largest economy was shrinking at a slower pace and scotched fears of an inflation threat, underpinning investor hopes for recovery. The Nikkei and the Hang Seng moved up 2.15 per cent each. The Seoul Composite closed up 2.12 per cent.

Signals from US markets were mixed. The Nasdaq moved up 1.55 per cent, while the Dow slipped 0.28 per cent.

The Sensex slipped 77.11 points, or 0.53 per cent, to close at 14,345.62. The CNX Nifty dipped 1.19 per cent and closed the day at 4,241.85.

“Selling was mainly noticed in Reliance and ONGC stocks. ONGC’s poor results and reduction in its weight in the Nifty led to large selling in the stock,” said Amitabh Chakraborty, head (equities), Religare Securities.

In spite of the dip, the market breadth was fairly positive. Out of 2,724 shares traded on the BSE, 1,390 advanced and 1,248 declined. The rest 86 remained unchanged.

Besides realty, bankex and consumer goods indices, which were marginally up, all other sectoral benchmarks closed in the red. Auto led the fall as it slipped 2.18 per cent, followed by the oil & gas index which dropped 2.10 per cent.

Among the Sensex stocks, Tata Motors tumbled 5.43 per cent, followed by Sun Pharmaceuticals (3.47 per cent), Maruti Suzuki (3.10 per cent), Mahindra & Mahindra (2.94 per cent) and Bhel (2.73 per cent).

Among the gainers, HDFC scored the highest at 3 per cent, followed by Jaiprakash Associates (2.04 per cent), Tata Power (1.85 per cent), ACC (1.73 per cent) and ICICI Bank (1.36 per cent). Ambareesh Baliga, vice-president, Karvy Stock Broking, said both profit-booking by FIIs and short-covering made sure that the Sensex did not take any particular direction.

“Negative news such as the delay in monsoons and lower expectations from the Union Budget are acting as deterrents for investors,” added Baliga.