16 December 2011

Nifty closes below 4700 for 1st time since 2009


It was a dire situation for the market on Friday despite RBI's policy on expected lines and flat global cues. The Nifty closed below the psychological 4700-mark for the first time since November 3, 2009 while theSensex shed 345.12 points. Looking at the sharp sell-off in index heavyweights, it seems investors cut some of their exposure in the second half of trade.
The Sensex closed at 15,491.4, after shedding more than 560 points from day's high of 16,068.90. The Nifty dropped 94.75 points, to end at 4,651.60; it touched the 4800 mark in an intra-day trade.
Sanjay Sinha, Founder of Citrus Advisors listed out the points, which spoiled the mood of markets. According to him, first is global problem, second is currency, third is government policies and fourth is interest rates.
For the week, the Sensex and Nifty fell over 4.5%.
Experts feel the mid quarter review of monetary policy announced by the RBI was on expected lines, so it was completely non-event for the market. Breaking of technical level of 4700 amid huge volumes may be the reason that traders opted to short selling.
"Today’s fall is definitely a little more unexpected because the RBI policy didn’t have anything that would spook the market," He feels this is some bout of concentrated selling.
The Reserve Bank of India kept CRR unchanged at 6% (the money banks have to necessarily park with the RBI), SLR at 24% (money which every bank has to maintain in the form of cash, gold or approved securities), repo rate (at which banks borrow money from RBI) at 8.5%, and even reverse repo rate (at which RBI borrow money from banks) remains unchanged at 7.5%.
The central bank insisted that downside risks to growth have clearly increased and inflation is still above comfort level. But it relieved some tension by saying further rate hikes may not be warranted. "Further monetary policy is likely to reverse cycle."
There was another ray of optimism, which is appreciation in the rupee after central bank's intervention. To control speculation in the currency, the Reserve Bank imposed restrictions with immediate effect on forward trading in the local currency by FIIs and traders and capped banks exposure to the forex market.
The Indian rupee moved up 1.5% or by 82 paise to 52.82 a dollar, which is quite better from record low of 54.29 touched yesterday. It was down by 80 paise to 68.85 an euro.
Shares of capital goods companies hit quite badly as experts feel the thrid quarter earnings would be very bad due to low order book and overall slowdown. The respective index fell 4.4%; L&T was down 5.33% and BHEL tanked 3.9%.
The BSE Bank, Realty, Power, Metal and Oil & Gas indices were down 2-3%. Index heavyweight Reliance Industries plunged 3.43%, to close at Rs 723 a share.

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