Sensex touches new intra-day high, but closed in red (Roundup)

A day after a benchmark index of Indian equities markets touched a new record, the barometer slipped by 162 points or 0.57 percent in Tuesday's trade.

However, in the intra-day trade the 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the S&P Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) touched a new record high of 28,541.22 points, surpassing its earlier recorded high of 28,514.98 points hit Monday.

The wider 50-scrip Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) too touched a new record high at 8,535.35 points. However, it closed at 8,463.10 points -- down 67.05 points or 0.79 percent.

In Tuesday's trade, the Sensex opened at 28,520.76 points and closed trade at 28,338.05 points, down 161.49 points or 0.57 percent from the previous day's close at 28,499.54 points.

Both Sensex and Nifty marked their single biggest daily fall since Oct 16.

The Sensex touched a high of 28,541.22 points and a low of 28,217.50 points in the intra-day trade.

The markets which were seen bullish at the start lost steam as there were no indications of any developments on further reforms like Goods and Service Tax (GST) and land acquisition norms that might be announced during the ongoing winter session.

Instead, the sentiments turned bearish which lead to profit-booking in bank, automobile, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), capital goods and metal stocks.

However, oil and gas and healthcare sector witnessed healthy buying.

"The market opened higher but quickly came under profit taking on the back of weakness in Asian markets and may be due to fear of further fall in Indian rupee," said Shrikant Chouhan, head of technical research, Kotak Securities.

"The sell-off was broad based and that tanked the Nifty by 100 points during the day. Investors should look for metal stocks as the metal index is exhibiting more promising pattern on long term charts."

The S&P bank index lost by 277.90 points, automobile index moved down by 201.34 points, FMCG index was lower 197.31 points, capital goods index decreased by 176.12 points, and metal index slipped 156.30 points.

However, oil and gas stocks closed 61.35 points up, followed by healthcare index which rose by 33.77 points.

The major Sensex gainers were: BHEL, up 2.95 percent at Rs.265.20; Hindustan Uniliver, up 1.97 percent at Rs.764.75; ONGC, up 1.34 percent at Rs.385.80; DrReddy, up 1.20 percent at Rs.3,566.65; and Bharti Airtel, up 1.13 percent at Rs.403.15.

The major Sensex losers were: ITC, down 4.99 percent at Rs.355.70; Tata Steel, down 2.56 percent at Rs.464.40; ICICI Bank, down 2.02 percent at Rs.1,737.10; NTPC, down 1.96 percent at Rs.140; and Larsen and Toubro, down 1.93 percent at Rs.1,636.50.

Among other Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei index was down 0.29 percent, Shanghai's Composite Index was higher by 1.37 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.21 percent

In Europe, London's FTSE 100 was up 0.10 percent. France's CAC 40 was higher by 0.47 percent and Germany's DAX Index gained 0.89 percent.