The Hindu Business Line : Heavy selling pulls stocks down

Mumbai, June 27 The ‘Friday syndrome’ hit the equity market for the second week in a row, as investors, gripped by fears of galloping inflation, resorted to heavy selling.

This week, besides the high inflation figure of 11.42 per cent, there was more depressing news: oil price hit the record $142 a barrel. The US and other overseas markets fell sharply and political uncertainty at home over the Nuclear deal further dampened the market sentiment.

The benchmark index closed below 14,000-levels at 13,802, losing 620 points from its previous close.

NSE’s Nifty index dropped 179 points to 4136.65.

On last Friday, the Sensex had lost 516 points after the inflation climbed to double digits at 11.05 per cent from 8.75 per cent in the previous week.

Chain reaction

“It’s a chain of events that is pulling the market down – high inflation means high interest rate and higher input costs. Commodity prices are rising and access to capital is becoming difficult whether it is equity or debt,” said an analyst.

The market opened with a huge negative gap of 294 points , taking a cue from the heavy fall in the overnight US market and the weak opening of the Asian markets. Sensex fell to a low of 13,760 intra-day as inflation numbers came in.

Interest rate-sensitive sectors such as bank, auto and realty faced heavy selling. Bankex shed maximum of 5.34 per cent among the BSE sectoral indices, followed by Auto index (5.26 per cent), Realty index (4.45 per cent). None of the sectoral indices could escape the selling pressure.

FIIs selling out

In the current market, finding the bottom is becoming difficult. FIIs maintained their net selling position (Rs 703.11 crore), a trend witnessed over the past one month, while the domestic institutions again went for value-buying (Rs 305.71 crore as per the BSE-NSE data.) FIIs have sold equities worth Rs 10,000 crore so far in June with today’s provisional figures along with Rs 9349.60 crore worth of selling recorded by SEBI as on Thursday.The domestic mutual funds have bought equities worth approximately Rs 3,000 crore.

Large cap stocks were among those severely hit. As compared to the 4.30 per cent fall in the Sensex, BSE Midcap index fell by 3.19 per cent and the Small-cap index by 2.68 per cent.