Bears halt six-day bull rally; Sensex ends 190 pts lower

Equity markets finally registered its first loss on Thursday, ending the six-day winning streak as the downfall in other Asian markets coupled with sluggish trend in European gauges prompted investors to book profit in defensive and banking stocks. Today’s fall came after the Sensex witnessed a massive rally over the past one week, surging 1,419 points or 5.4 percent to breach the 27,000-mark a day before. [caption id=“attachment_2460820” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] While traders were already anticipating a fall after the markets showed signs of nervousness in last couple of sessions, bears eventually made a comeback after the recent hiatus. Despite a firm opening and adding 84 points in quick succession to touch the day’s high of 27,120.11, the Sensex soon lost ground mostly tracking the global market weakness and lingered in negative territory thereafter. With profit-taking intensifying in the second-half, the Sensex faltered sharply to the day’s low of 26,762.36, down 274 points. The 30-share BSE S&P Sensex finally closed the session at 26,845.81, down 190.04 points, or 0.7 percent from previous close. The broader 50-stock CNX Nifty, too, ended weak at 8,129.35, down 48.05 points, or 0.6 percent. Other Asian indices such as Japan’s Nikkei dropped a percent to end at 18,141.17, while China’s Hang Seng fell 0.7 percent to 22,354.91 while Shanghai Composite jumped 3 percent to 3,143.36. Market breadth also ended lower with 1,479 stocks declining against 1,267 advances on BSE. Private sector oil company Reliance Industries was the biggest loser in Sensex pack, ending 2.7 percent lower at Rs 889.15. While Gail fell 2.5 percent to Rs 305.25, ITC shed 2.1 percent to Rs 339.15 and ICICI Bank eased 1.6 percent to Rs 278.45. Other losers such as NTPC declined 1.4 percent to Rs 125.95, Sun Pharma dipped 1.1 percent to Rs 915.55, Axis Bank lost 1.1 percent to Rs 491.35 and M&M was down a percent at Rs 1,272.80. Lupin, TCS, L&T, Bajaj Auto and ONGC were down around a percent each.