Sensex ends 58 points lower; RIL falls 4 per cent, Tata Motors up 4.5 per cent

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed marginally lower amid choppy trade on first day of the week shrugging off the positive global cues. Equity benchmarks remained in a negative terrain due to sharp fall in heavyweight Reliance Industries post its second quarter earnings. The BSE benchmark fell 57.60 points, to close at 17,025.09 and the NSE Nifty dropped just 14.05 points, to end at 5,118.25.

Hiren Ved, director and chief investment officer of Alchemy Capital Management is sceptical about the chances of the market breaking out of the trading range. "We are still pretty much in a very broad range between 4700 and 4800 on the downside, and may be 5400-5500 on the upside," he says. "We will have to spend a lot of time before the issues that we face, both domestically as well as internationally, get sorted out," he rues.

Capital goods, power, telecom, select technology and healthcare companies' shares too were on sellers' radar. However, buying in auto, banking, realty and FMCG stocks has limited the downside to major extent.

Reliance Industries, which has 11% weightage on Sensex, fell nearly 4% post second quarter results of FY12. RIL's July-September quarter net profit rose 15.8% year-on-year, to Rs 5,703 crore. This was marginally lower then the CNBC-TV18 poll projecting the bottomline at Rs 5,750 crore. Net turnover for the quarter rose 35% to Rs 80,790 crore, better than the poll estimate of Rs 79,800 crore.

Narendra Taneja of Upstream says the flattish growth on the D6 or gas part will continue, as indicated, for another three quarters. Further, Taneja says he see further decline in the production for a time period of about 6 months to about 12 months.

Major largecaps like NTPC, TCS, BHEL, L&T, Wipro and BHEL fell between 1% and 2.7%.