Equities end three days of rally, Sensex falls by 194 points

Equity benchmark indices ended three days of the rally on Wednesday with selling pressure witnessed in banking, auto and realty stocks.

The BSE S & P Sensex closed 194 points lower at 39,757 while the Nifty 50 sank 59 points to settle at 11,906.

At the National Stock Exchange, most sectoral indices were in the negative zone. Realty fell by 2.05 per cent, auto by 1.13 per cent and private bank 1.02 per cent.

Shares of Indiabulls Housing Finance fell 7.8 per cent intraday after the company moved the Supreme Court seeking an urgent listing of a plea filed against it. The petition alleged that the company misappropriated Rs 98,000 crore of public money.

Reliance Capital sank 6.8 per cent to Rs 87.5o per share after the company's statutory auditor Price Waterhouse & Co Chartered Accountants LLP (PwC) resigned with effect from Tuesday.

Shares of Eros International Media were locked in the lower circuit for the fifth straight day, down 9.89 per cent at Rs 33.25 apiece after Moody's Investors Service downgraded the corporate family ratings to B2 from B1. It also changed the outlook to negative from stable.

Yes Bank shed over 3 per cent after global rating agency Moody's on Tuesday placed its foreign currency issuer rating of Ba1 under review for downgrade.

The other which lost were Bharti Infratel, Tech Mahindra and Hero MotorCorp.

However, Tata Steel gained 2.7 per cent while GAIL was up 1.4 per cent. The other gainers were ONGC, Vedanta and Tata Consultancy Services.

Meanwhile, most Asian markets were in the red with Japan's Nikkei down 0.3 per cent and Shanghai blue chips falling 0.7 per cent.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.7 per cent as demonstrators stormed roads next to government offices to protest against a bill that would allow people to be sent to China for trial.

Investors turned cautious after US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was holding up a trade deal with China and had no interest in moving ahead unless Beijing agrees to four or five major points.