Sensex, Nifty Decline For Fourth Straight Session Dragged By Auto, IT Shares

The Indian equity benchmarks fell for fourth straight session on Wednesday dragged by losses in index heavyweights like Infosys, Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro, ITC, Bajaj Finance and Hindustan Unilever. The Sensex fell as much as 846 points and the Nifty 50 index briefly dropped below its important psychological level of 16,000 at the day's lowest point. However, buying in banking and financial services shares helped benchmarks recover from intraday lows.

The Sensex fell 276 points to close at 54,088 and Nifty 50 index tumbled 73 points to settle at 16,167.

Markets have been facing selling pressure after the Reserve Bank of India's Monetary Policy Committee surprised the street with rate and cash reserve ratio hike. Meanwhile, concerns about rising inflation impacting profit margins of companies are also adding to selling pressure, analysts said.

Ten of 15 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange ended lower led by the Nifty IT index's 1.2 per cent gain. Nifty Auto, FMCG, PSU Bank and Consumer Durable indices also fell between 0.5-0.9 per cent.

On the other hand, Nifty Bank, Financial Services, Private Bank and Realty indices ended higher.

Smallcap shares witnessed intense selling pressure as Nifty Smallcap 100 index dropped nearly 3 per cent while Nifty Midcap 100 index declined 0.4 per cent.

Shree Cements was top Nifty loser, the stock fell 3.3 per cent to close at Rs 23,499. Bajaj Finserv, Larsen & Toubro, NTPC, Bharat Petroleum, Bajaj Finance, Maruti Suzuki, Power Grid, ITC, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and Asian Paints also fell between 1-2 per cent.

On the flipside, ONGC, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Cipla, HDFC, HDFC Life, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Britannia Industries and SBI Life were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was extremely negative as 2,593 shares ended lower while 802 closed higher on the BSE.