Looking back at today's stock market

Doing justice to our morning forecast, Indian stock market opened on a positive note. Both BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were in green territory, in the early hours of trading. But as the day progressed, a downtrend was noticed and by the end of the day, market closed with heavy losses. However, for major part of the day, the market traded within a narrow range, oscillating on both sides of the equator. But after 2 PM, the market went on a dizzy and plummeted nearly 100 points within the last two hours of trading. Persistent selling pressure in majority of the sectors and profit booking in index heavyweights weighed on the market sentiments and it closed in red.

BSE Sensex closed at 19229.26, down 126 points over the previous close before it touched a day's high of 19421 and a day's low of 19196. It opened at 19403. The NSE Nifty closed at 5851.50, down 36.50 points over the previous close. It earlier touched a day’s high of 5907 and a day’s low of 5841. It opened at 5900. Barring the Auto index on BSE, all the other BSE sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE Consumer Durable index slipped 3%, the BSE FMCG index fell 2.8%, BSE Realty and the BSE Capital Goods index ended lower by 1.6% and 1.4% respectively. Even the BSE Mid-Cap and the small-Cap index were under pressure, both fell over 1% each.

Relentless selling in CD, FMCG, Realty, Metal, CG, Power, PSU, HC, Technology and Banking shares led to a major decline. Heavyweights like ITC, L&T, HUL, SBI, HDFC, Infosys and Sterlite were the major negative contributors to the Sensex. However, Auto and Oil & Gas stocks bucked the trend in weak market. RIL, Maruti Suzuki, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors,  are among gainers in Sensex and Nifty. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, NTPC,  Sun Pharma, ONGC, NTPC, SBI, Tata Steel, Hero MotoCorp, ONGC, Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors, Hindalco Inds, M&M were among losers in Sensex and Nifty.

Sentiment got a hit after reports stated that Global index provider FTSE lowered the weightage of index heavyweight ITC in its global equity index series from 75% to 24%. Post the announcement, shares of ITC plummeted by over 4%. The fall in the market was also in line with domestic peers as investors stayed cautious ahead of the monthly inflation announcement tomorrow (December 14, 2012) and concern over postponement of proposed rate cut by RBI.