Budget fails to win over investors; Nifty slides 43 pts

Financial markets gave a thumbs-down to the Union Budget which fell short of street expectations following a series of tax proposals despite maintaining the path to fiscal prudence and growth.
After battling violent swings throughout the session, NSE benchmark Nifty settled below the psychologically significant 7,000 mark with a modest 43 points slide.
It witnessed a massive 200 points swing in intra-day trade before recouping late afternoon.
Focusing more on rural economy to address the agrarian distress, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented his third Budget that envisages a huge spending of Rs 1.77 lakh crore to boost incomes of the poor.

Jaitley reiterated his commitment to containing fiscal deficit at 3.5 percent of GDP in FY17. He also said that more support will be provided to exporters to give a boost to overseas shipments against the backdrop of global and domestic headwinds.
After a positive start, bourses turned highly volatile on concerns about negative surprises in the Budget.

Proposal for a higher dividend distribution tax on those earning more and raising securities transaction tax in some categories also added to jitters.
Extreme bearish global sentiment too set an uncertain tone to trade after weekend's G20 finance meet in Shanghai failed to come out with concrete steps and new easing measures to spur global growth amid the slowdown in emerging markets.

Though world finance leaders vowed to use "all policy tools - monetary, fiscal and structural - individually and collectively" to avert risks threatening growth.
Elsewhere, all major bourses in region ended sharply lower, with Shanghai sliding over 2.9 per cent to a 15-month low on renewed concerns over China's economic fundamentals after its central bank cut reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage points.
The 50-share broader index opened higher at 7,050.45 and fluctuated between 7,094.60 and 6,825.80, before ending at 6,987.05, revealing a loss of 42.70 points, or 0.61 per cent.
Among the sectoral indices, infra plunged 1.92 per cent. It was followed by technology (1.77 per cent), media (1.43 per cent), auto (1.12 per cent) and energy (0.63 per cent).

However, Nifty bank surged 1.12 per cent, followed by PSU bank (0.81 per cent), metal (0.25 per cent), FMCG (0.14 per cent), realty (0.15 per cent) and pharma (0.03 per cent).
The broader indices, however, ended mixed as mid-cap gained 0.35 per cent, while small-cap fell 0.20 per cent.
Major losers included Infosys, ONCG, L&T, Maruti, TCS, Axis Bank, Sun Pharma, HUL, Power Grid, Zee and Asian Paints.
Key losers were ICICI Bank, Reliance, ITC, HDFC Bank, Kotak Bank, HDFC, SBI, IndusInd Bank, Lupin, Dr Reddy's, Yes Bank, Grasim, BPCL, Bosch, Tata Steel, Gail and ACC.
Turnover in cash segment shot-up to Rs 24,880.62 crore from Rs 14,088.48 crore last Friday. A total of 12,717.03 lakh shares changed hands in 95,36,728 trades.

The market capitalisation of NSE stood at Rs 84,22,857 crore.