The Hindu Business Line : For markets, it was a week of battering

Rising oil prices and high inflation figures hammered stocks over the entire week, dragging the benchmark indices down by almost 5 per cent from last Friday’s close.

The market had shown a brief turnaround when the IT bellwether Infosys announced its fourth quarter results on April 15; the Sensex went on to touch a high of 17,735 on May 5 before the trend reversed.

Commenting on the sustained fall over the week, Mr Dinesh Thakkar, Chairman & MD, Angel Broking, said, “The market is greatly concerned over the high crude prices, now hovering around $125 per barrel. The second major concern is that domestic inflation is not under control.” Inflation for the week ended April 26 was 7.61 per cent.

“The quarterly results were fairly positive but for some surprises like Siemens and ABB. They were in fact better than what was broadly expected; what is concerning the markets are the high oil prices and the state of the US economy,” said Mr Nipun Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, Unitis Tower Wealth Advisors, a private wealth management firm.

The Sensex lost 863 points during the week, falling steeply by 4.90 per cent from a high of 17,600 to 16,737 this Friday. The Nifty fell 4.69 per cent to 4,982.60 from last week’s close of 5,228.2.

Both FIIs and domestic institutions were net sellers for most of the trading sessions during the week. FIIs’ net sale of equities was Rs 1,111.90 crore in the first four trading sessions. On Friday too, FIIs were net sellers for Rs 619.34 crore, the provisional data on theNSE indicated.

Domestic institutional investors were net sellers for Rs 132 crore in the first three trading sessions of the week, but were net buyers for Rs 180.16 crore on Friday, as they did some cherry picking in some badly beaten stocks.

On the prospects for the equity markets in the coming week, Mr Thakkar said, “If oil is unable to come below the $125 level, the sentiment will continue to be damp.”

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