In a choppy session on Wednesday, the benchmark indexes came under selling pressure due to mixed trends from global markets. The indices ended up falling for the second straight session because of high crude oil prices and foreign fund outflows.
The Sensex fell by 185.24 points to close at 55,381. It dropped by 474.98 points or 0.85 per cent to 55,091. The Nifty dropped by 61.80 points or 0.37 per cent to end at 16,522. Nestle India, Tech Mahindra, Bajaj Finserv, Sun Pharma, Hindustan Unilever, PowerGrid, UltraTech Cement, HCL Technologies, Wipro, Infosys and Bajaj Finance were among the top Sensex losers, falling by up to 3 per cent.
HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank and Tata Steel were among the top Sensex gainers, rising to 1.32 per cent Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities said. Consolidation movement with weak bias continued in the market for the second consecutive session on Wednesday and Nifty closed the day lower by 61 points. After opening on a positive note, the market tried to move up in the early part of the session. A sustainable upside recovery was seen towards the end of the mid part and the weakness got triggered in the mid part. A negative candle was formed on the daily chart with upper and lower shadow. This pattern indicates a formation of high wave type candle pattern, which displays high volatility in the market. Such high wave formations are normally associated with a reasonable up move or down move act as imminent trend reversals. The predictive value of the pattern could be less, having formed this pattern within a range movement. The equity market snapped a three day streak of gaining strength on Tuesday as market participants got nervous ahead of the release of the Q 4 GDP data. Sensex dropped 359 points to 55,566 and Nifty closed 77 points lower at 16,584. Foreign institutional investors sold shares worth of net Rs 1,003. In the previous session, there were 56 crore.
The rupee bounced back from its record low to end 20 paise higher against the US dollar at 77.51 today.
The rupee opened at 77.58 against the dollar in the interbank forex market and moved in a range of 77.51 to 77.62 in the day's trade.
During the afternoon, the bourses in Europe traded on a mixed note. The US stock markets had ended up falling on Tuesday.
International oil benchmark Brent crude jumped 1.49 per cent to $117.27 per barrel.