Sensex slips 471 points, Nifty falls below 14,700; IndusInd Bank, HUL, ONGC top losers

Sensex and Nifty fell for the second consecutive session amid mixed global markets today. While Sensex ended 471 points lower at 48,690, Nifty lost 154 points to 14,696. On Tuesday, benchmark indices snapped their four-session winning streak. Sensex tumbled 341 points to 49,161 and Nifty slumped 91.60 points to 14,850.

IndusInd  Bank was the top Sensex loser today, falling 3.35% followed by HUL, ONGC, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank declining up to 3%. Titan, Maruti, PowerGrid and SBI were among the top  Sensex gainers rising up to 1.31%. Of 30 Sensex stocks, 23 closed in the red. BSE mid cap and small cap indices fell 188 points and 139 points, respectively.

Banking, metal and IT stocks led the losses with BSE bankex, metal index and IT indices falling 537 points, 648 points, and 208 points respectively. Bank Nifty too fell 419 points to 32,452 in trade today. Of 19 BSE sectoral indices, 18 ended in the red. BSE auto index was the sole gainer rising 57.49 points to 22,486.

Sahaj Agrawal, Head of Research- Derivatives at Kotak Securities said,"Nifty remains in momentum uptrend with support zone seen at 14400-14500; on the higher side 15000-15100 is expected. Breach of 14400 is expected to result in increased volatility. We expect positive bias to continue with action seen in the Auto, Realty and select midcap stocks; Metals are expected to witness high volatility."

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Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) remained net sellers in the capital markets, as they pulled out Rs 336.00 crore on Tuesday, as per provisional data. Investor wealth fell to Rs 211 .94 lakh crore against all-time high of Rs 213.41 lakh crore on BSE on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, market breadth was positive with 1,586 stocks ending higher against 1,488 shares ending lower on BSE.

Shrikant Chouhan, Executive Vice President, Equity Technical Research at Kotak Securities said, "There was heavy unwinding in long positions of metal stocks ahead of the bank holiday, while auto, pharmaceutical and mid-cap stocks found selective buying.

The market has formed bearish continuation formation. However, as the markets are range bound, till the Nifty/Sensex are not closing below the levels of 14,600/48,400, we would do a pullback towards, 14,800/49,000 levels.  The focus should be on the Cement, PSU Banks and Auto stocks if the market remains strong.  Buy metal stocks if the market drops to 14500/48100 levels."

Rupee fell 8 paise to close at 73.42 against the US dollar amid risk aversion in the global markets and surge in crude oil prices. At the interbank forex market, the local unit opened lower at 73.51 against the greenback and traded in the range of 73.39 to 73.51 during the day.

Global markets

On Tuesday, the S&P 500 lost 0.9% and the Dow sank 1.4% in its worst day since February. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.1%. In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.6% to 3,462.75 while the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo tumbled 1.6% to 28,147.51. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 0.8% to 28,231.04.