Sensex retreats...Nifty recoils after hitting 5900

The Indian market ended the day in the negative terrain after rallying for seven straight trading sessions. The day began on a flat note amid slightly negative global cues and trading remained lackluster ahead of the RBI policy review. However, post policy announcement benchmark indices witnessed whipsaw reactions before closing slightly lower amid extremely strong volume and turnover.



The Reserve Bank of India, in its mid-quarterly policy review today hiked the repo rate by 25bps and the reverse repo by 50bps. "The central bank's action was slightly more halkish than the markets had anticipated. But, experts are betting on the RBI taking a pause after raising policy rates five times in the year so far," says Amar Ambani, Vice President, Research – India Private Clients, IIFL.

The Sensex lost 84 points to close at 19,417. The index hit an intra-day high of 19,637 and an intra-day low of 19,383.

The NSE Nifty lost 32 points to close at 5,828 after touching a high of 5,902 and a low of 5,815.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, the BSE Realty index was the top gainer the index was up 1.5%, followed by BSE Bank index (up 0.8%) and BSE Capital Goods index (up 0.6%) and BSE FMCG index (up 0.3%).

The broader indices ended with slight losses, the BSE Mid-Cap index was down 0.8% and BSE Small-Cap index was down 0.4%.

Markets in Asia ended in the red; the Nikkei in Japan lost 0.2%, Australia's S&P/ASX ended lower 1.1%, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong lost by 0.2% and the Shanghai SE Composite edged lower by 1.2%.

The European indices were trading in the red, the DAX in Germany was down 0.2%, the CAC 40 index in France was down 0.2%.

Outside the frontline indices, the big losers in the broader market were Exide Ind, Pantaloon, Jubilant Org, Thermax and PTC. On the other hand, gainers included APIL, Godrej Ind, BOB and EIH.