Post Market Commentary

Equities snapped the two-day up-move on Thursday to close lower weighed down by oil & gas and banking stocks. Weak global markets and profit booking at record high levels kept the indices subdued.

Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex closed near its day’s low at 20,104.39 down 271.48 pts. It touched an intra-day low of 20,065. National Stock Exchange’s Nifty closed 101.20 pts down at 6,058.10. It touched an intra-day low of 6040. Buying in second line stocks saw BSE Midcap and Smallcap Index up 0.33 per cent and 0.93 per cent respectively.

Bharti Airtel (down 6.31%), ICICI Bank (3.27%), Maruti Suzuki (3.11%), ONGC (2.85%), Satyam Computer (2.5%) and Reliance Industries (2.36%) drifted the Sensex lower. ITC (up 3.38%), Tata Steel (2.75%), Cipla (1.93%), Bajaj Auto (1.69%), Hindalco Industries ( 1.36%) and Ranbaxy Laboratories (0.86%) were the gainers. Market breadth on BSE showed 1,849 advances and 1,053 declines.