Nifty slips for sixth consecutive session; RIL, Tata Steel fall

Triggered by weaker-than-average monsoon estimates and selling pressure by foreign institutional investors, the CNX Nifty index of the National Stock Exchange fell for the six consecutive trading session on Monday. While the 50-share index fell 70.55 points to 8,044.15, the 30-share BSE Sensex fell 245.40 points to 26,523.09.

During the day, the BSE index touched a high of 26,827.06 and low of 26,472.87. Nifty touched a high of 8,131 and low of 8,030.55.

Overall market breadth remained weak on the BSE as 781 stocks ended with gains while 1,837 closed with losses. However, advances to decline ratio for Nifty remained weak at 12:38.

"Largely, the exit is being taken by some of the global traders due to a lot of uncertainty about the monsoon rains, which is being worsened by negative sentiment due to tax worries and slow pace of reforms," said Deven Choksey, managing director at K R Choksey Securities.

Gaurav Jain, director, Hem Securities, says, "Continued selling by foreign portfolio investors in Indian market and concern of shift of their interest from Indian markets to Chinese market created an alarming signal in the mindset of the investors. Further, weakening of the rupee dampened the sentiment taking the markets lower with Nifty nearing the level of 8,000."

Selling pressure was visible across the sectors as all the sectoral indices on the Bombay Stock Exchange ended in red. The BSE Consumer Durables index slid the most 1.94 per cent to 10,059. It was followed by BSE Metal index (down 1.73 per cent to 9294.88), BSE Oil & Gas index (down 1.55 per cent to 9382.14) and BSE FMCG index (down 1.52 per cent to Rs 7,378.69).

Among the Sensex stocks, Tata Power, Bajaj Auto, Axis Bank, TCS and Mahindra & Mahindra were the top performers with gains of 1.13 per cent, 1 per cent, 0.92 per cent, 0.24 per cent and 0.15 per cent, respectively. However, Vedanta, Tata Steel, Reliance Industries, Hero MotoCorp and Sun Pharma declined by 3.12 per cent, 2.64 per cent, 2.30 per cent, 2.24 per cent and 2.21 per cent, respectively, and stood at the bottom of the performance chart.

Overseas funds had withdrawn a net Rs 5,700 crore ($889.9 million) from shares last month, when markets were gripped by worries about a potential retrospective minimum alternate tax (MAT).

Among Asian peers, Nikkei 225 was down by 0.02 per cent, while Shanghai and Hang Seng were up by 2.17 per cent and 0.21 per cent on Monday.

(With inputs from Reuters)