Sensex falls 1,080 points in last four trading sessions

The Sensex extended its losses for the fourth consecutive trading session as the index declined 44.93 points, or 0.17 per cent, to 26,768.49 on Friday. The CNX Nifty index on the National Stock Exchange also declined 0.20 per cent to 8,114.70.

During the day, BSE Sensex touched a high of 27014.42 and low of 26718.44. Nifty touched a high of 8,191 and low of 8,100.

Overall market breadth remained strong on the BSE as 1,377 stocks ended with gains while 1,288 closed with losses. However, advances-to-decline ratio for Nifty remained weak at 19:30.

Gaurav Jain, director, Hem Securities, says, "Markets even after hard struggle cannot manage to come out of bear grip and continues to languish. Investors continue to be worried about Greek woes, monsoon worries, sell-off by foreign portfolio investors and weak global cues. Few macro-economic data, progress of monsoon, rupee-dollar movement and interests of foreign portfolio investors will shape the trend for the coming week."

Among the Sensex stocks, Coal India, GAIL, NTPC, ONGC and Sun Pharma were the top performers with gains of 4.44 per cent, 2.94 per cent, 2.52 per cent, 2.32 per cent and 1.97 per cent, respectively. However, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors, HDFC, Axis Bank and TCS declined by 2.18 per cent, 2.11 per cent, 1.62 per cent, 1.38 per cent and 1.30 per cent, respectively, and stood at the bottom of the performance chart.

In the past four trading sessions, Sensex and Nifty lost around 1,080 points and 319 points, respectively after RBI took a cautious stance on economic recovery and IMD forecast monsoon to be "deficient" this year.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, BSE Realty index slid the most 1.44 per cent to 1,410.28. It was followed by BSE Bankex (down 0.93 per cent to 20,190.33), BSE IT index (down 0.80 per cent to 10,705.99) and BSE Auto index (down 0.60 per cent to Rs 18,099.03).

However, BSE Metal and BSE FMCG index jumped 1.78 per cent and 1.05 per cent to 9,458.78 and 7,492.9, respectively.

Among Asian peers, Nikkei 225 and Hang Seng closed lower by 0.13 per cent and 1.06 per cent, respectively, while Shanghai closed higher by 1.54 per cent on Friday.