Bulls take a breather...Nifty ends below 6000

Just when we thought that the bull-run may be unstoppable, the Indian markets ended a three day rally on a sour note. After enjoying their stay above the 6,000 and the 20,000 levels in the early trades, the Nifty and the Sensex lost steam owing to some profit booking.



“Lack of participation by the broader market and worries of continuous selling by local institutions led to today's cooling. Also, concerns that the Fed will have to resort to further quantitative easing to boost the US economy weighed on the sentiment,” says Amar Ambani, Vice President, Research – India Private Clients, IIFL.

The FOMC didn’t announce any asset purchase plan but said that it was ready to do more to stimulate a sluggish US economy. So, clearly there are problems on the external front, including worries over the euro-zone debt issues and a slowdown in China.

The Sensex slipped 60 points to close at 19,941. The index hit an intra-day high of 20,105 and an intra-day low of 19,804. While, the NSE Nifty fell 18 points to close at 5,991 after touching a high of 6,037 and a low of 5,946.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, the BSE Consumer Durables index was the top gainer the index was up 1%, followed by BSE Bank index (up 0.5%) and BSE FMCG index (up 0.2%).

Among top losers were, BSE Realty index was down 1.6% and BSE IT index was down 1.3%. On the other hand, the broader indices were under pressure again, the BSE Mid-Cap index was down 0.4% and BSE Small-Cap index was down 0.2%.

Markets in Asia ended mixed; the Nikkei in Japan was down 0.4%, Australia's S&P/ASX ended higher 0.2%, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong ended flat and the Shanghai SE Composite ended higher by 0.2%.

The European indices were trading in the red, the DAX in Germany was down 0.7%, the CAC 40 index in France was down 0.9% and FTSE index in UK slipped 0.4%.

Outside the frontline indices, the big loses in the broader market were Ispat Ind, Dabur, HCC and Gujarat NRE Coke. On the other hand, gainers included Moser Baer, IDBI Bank, IRB Infra and Canara Bank.