Sensex slips 550 points, Nifty below 21,600; IT, auto, capital goods shares lead losses

The Indian equity market fell on Tuesday amid profit booking in IT, capital goods and auto stocks. Sensex declined 560 points to 71,711 and Nifty slipped 155 points to 21,587. UltraTech Cement, M&M, L&T, Wipro and Tata Steel were the top Sensex losers falling up to 3.06 per cent. Sun Pharma, Bharti Airtel and Bajaj Finance were the only Sensex gainers, rising up to 2.23%.

Market cap of BSE-listed firms fell to Rs 363.56 lakh crore today.

Capital goods, auto and IT shares were the top sectoral losers with their indices falling 1033 points, 762 points and 516 points respectively on BSE. The BSE healthcare index was the sole gainer among 19 sectoral indices, rising 300 points to 31,978.

V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services said, "An important trend to watch is the spike in the volatility index VIX to 14.5  which indicates that high volatility is round the corner. Yesterday's sell off in the last 30 minutes is a warning that at higher levels, there can be bouts of big selling."

Market volatility index  India VIX rose 1.23% to 14.86 in morning trade today. Market breadth was negative with 1440 stocks rising against 2128 stocks falling on BSE. 140 shares were unchanged.

Previous session

The domestic equity market closed higher on Monday.  Sensex rose 31 points to end the session at 72,271 and Nifty gained 10 points to settle at 21,741.

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