Sensex down fourth day in a row

The Indian bourses continued to slip for the fourth consecutive trading day. The Sensex saw a weak opening in the morning owing to weak Asian cues.

The major indices like the Nikkei, Hang Seng and the Shanghai Composite were down 1% each.

The Sensex touched a low of 17,530 as realty, infrastructure stocks slid on rate-hike worries. Partial recovery was attemped in between because of buying in select banking stocks like ICICI Bank.

However the momentum was hindered and in the afternoon trades majority of the stocks languished in the red in sync with the rest of the global peers. European markets also saw a soft opening.

Volatility existed in today's market with a narrow range as the Sensex moved 134 points through out the day.

The benchmark index finally ended (provisional)at 17,572, down 67 points. The NSE Nifty has settled (provisional)17 points down at 5,256.

The market breadth was negative, out of 3,005 shares traded, 1,711 declined and 1,165 advanced on the BSE.

Among the sectoral indices, power and oil & gas indices continued to exhibit weakness, down 0.5% each.

While on the other hand FMCG and bankex were the only prominent sectoral gainers.

Jaiprakash Associates and DLF were down 2.5% each at Rs 147 and RS 330, respectively. Hero Honda, Mahindra & Mahindra, BHEL and Grasim Industries slipped over 1% each.

While ITC added 2.5% at Rs 269. It was followed by Tata Steel and Tata Motors, up 1% each.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance Industries topped the value list with a turnover of Rs 95.34 crore. It was followed by Tata Steel (Rs 76.17 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 71.15 crore), Sesa Goa (Rs 58.96 crore) and Max India (57.40 crore).

Goenka Diamond & Jewels led the volume chart on the BSE with trades of 30.33 million shares. It was followed by Birla Power (8.39 million), BAG Films (8.12 million), Unitech (6.98 million) and FCS Software (6.90 million).