Nifty closes below 4950; tech, banks, cap goods, RIL drag

The Nifty remained lower throughout the session and closed below 4950 level. Heavyweight Infosys declined in the second half on the back of profit booking and that was despite positive earnings in Q2 and guidance for FY10.

All sectoral indices ended in the red; selling banking, auto, capital goods and select power shares dragged the markets lower. One percent fall in Reliance Industries also added more pressure. However, telecom stocks bounced back after four days of decline and ONGC, which outperformed the markets.

Pipavav Shipyard has seen more selling pressure in the second half of the trade. It closed below the issue price on the first day of trading. It was down 2.07% to Rs 56.80 as against issue price of Rs 58 per share. Total BSE and NSE turnover of 13.15 crore shares was above the issue size of 8.5 crore shares.

The markets started the day on a positive note following good Asian and US cues. However, the sell-off nearly across the sectors pushed the markets lower. The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 200.88 points or 1.19%, to settle at 16,642.66 and the 50-share NSE Nifty shut shop at 4945.20, down 1.14% or 57.05 points. These indices gained nearly 3% and 2.8% this week, respectively.

Jitendra Sriram, VP & Fund Manager-Equities at HSBC said there were two parts which were at play today. "one, overnight there have been statements from the US, the Fed will do a bit towards supporting the dollar which is causing the nervousness in the market place at this point of time and what we have seen is that that impact even Hong Kong and all others opened up quite firm and then gave up little bit of their gains. So to that extent after a kind of one way move on the dollar index (DXY), there is some kind of a bounce back which is causing this kind of nervousness."

"Second, there has been quite a substantial fund raising yesterday as well, USD 1-1.25 billion of dollar, it's not a small sum. I don't think you will have matching inflows coming in, so to that extent some money taken off the table to fund these kind of issuances so that's also preying on the market."