Sensex succumbs to global selloff…RIL shines

India managed to escape a sell-off on Monday but it could not do an encore on Tuesday as panic gripped world markets amid fears of Nuclear melt down in Japan. Still, the Indian markets put up a commendable performance in light of a world wide crash. The BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty recovered smartly from their intra-day lows led by relentless buying in the index bellwether Reliance Industries. It was the only notable gainer in the index. Even in the Nifty only couple of stocks like Siemens and Sunpharma managed to buck the weak trend.



The BSE Sensex lost 272 points to close at 18,168. It had earlier touched a day's high of 18,326 and a day's low of 17,920. It opened at 18,113. While, the NSE Nifty lost 82 points to close at 5,449

Barring the BSE Oil & Gas index all the other major sectoral indices ended in the red. BSE Realty was the top loser, down 3.2%, the BSE Metal, Power and the Auto index lost 2% each.

“Indian markets will be at the mercy of developments in Japan and trend in other overseas markets. In the Middle-East the situation appears to be highly volatile with Saudi Arabia sending its troops to Bahrain to quell a rebellion. Hopefully, there will be some improvement in the global sentiment in the coming days,” says Amar Ambani, Head of Research (India Private Clients) - IIFL.

The steep fall in today's session was largely due to a second day of carnage in the Japanese equities following news that substantial radiation started to leak from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The dollar and the yen rose while gold and crude oil futures declined following the radiation leak news. European markets and the US stock futures too tumbled. Meanwhile, other Asian markets also suffered heavily, tracking steep losses in the Japanese markets.

The radiation leak has been confirmed by the Japanese prime Minister Naoto Kan. He has urged people to stay calm even as he warned of further radiation outage from the Fukushima plant.

Coming back to India, outside the frontline indices, the big losers in the broader market were Bajaj Finserve, Areva, Hindustan Oil and Pantaloon. On the other hand, gainers included Central Bank, Castrol India, Apollo Tyres and BEL.

In the BSE, 1977 stocks advanced as against 847 declines. While, 103 stocks ended unchanged.