Mumbai, July 6 : Snapping a three-day upsurge, the Sensex today fell 17 points from from three-month high levels amid a weak rupee and insipid global trends.
After opening marginally higher in the morning, the BSE benchmark index moved in a narrow 130-point range and at closing slipped by 17.55 points o 17,521.12.
The Sensex had gained 140 points in last three days and yesterday ended at 17,538.67, its highest closing in 3 months.
Investors turned cautious ahead of quarter earnings by leading companies led by software majors, traders said. Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys release results on July 12.
Brokers said sentiments weakened as rupee fell the most in two weeks on speculation measures announced by European policy makers will not revive global economic growth.
European and Chinese central banks yesterday slashed interest rates while the Bank of England unveiled fresh stimulus measures worth 50 billion pounds.
The rupee was last trading at 55.6 levels against the US dollar. The market breadth was poor with 1,532 stocks of the 3,028 traded ending lower.
FMCG and banks fared well while metal, realty, consumer durables and capital goods shares lost value.
A mixed trend in Asia and lower opening in European stocks further influenced the market sentiment, experts said.
In the 30-share Sensex, 18 stocks led by heavyweights Infosys and Reliance Industries declined while 12 stocks, including ICICI Bank and HDFC, managed to close higher.
The 50-share National Stock Exchange index Nifty fell by 10.35 points, or 0.19 per cent to 5,316.95, after touching the day's low of 5,287.75.
Key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan declined by 0.04 per cent to 0.92 per cent while indices in China and Singapore firmed up. In Europe, France's CAC, Germany's DAX and the UK's FTSE were last trading 0.14-0.42 per cent down.
Back home, 11 out of 13 sectoral indices closed lower. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE-Realty dropped by 1.20 per cent, followed by the BSE-Metal (1.09 pc), the BSE-CD (1.08 pc), the BSE-CG (1.03 pc) and the BSE-Power (0.83 pc). However, the BSE-FMCG firmed up by 0.67 per cent and the BSE-Bankex dropped by 0.18 per cent.
“Banking stocks witnessed fresh buying on hope RBI will cut rates on July 31 credit policy. FMCG stocks witnessed bargain hunting. However realty, auto, metal and IT stocks witnessed profit booking,” said Shubham Agarwal, Associate VP & Senior Technical Equities Analyst, Motilal Oswal Securities.
Major losers from the Sensex pack were Jindal Steel (3.17 pc), Sterlite Industries (2 pc), Tata Power (1.99 pc), Maruti Suzuki (1.93 pc), Hero MotoCorp (1.74 pc), L&T (1.57 pc), Infosys (1.47 pc), Gail India (1.09 pc), Wipro (1.03 pc) and Bajaj Auto (1.01 pc).
Among gainers, ICICI Bank rose by 1.55 per cent, follwoed by HDFC (1.27 pc), M&M (1.16 pc), HUL (1.15 pc), Cipla (1.08 pc) and ITC (1.06 pc).
The total turnover dropped to Rs 2,111.63 crore from Rs 2,925.55 crore yesterday.
Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) remained net buyers and they pumped in Rs 429.22 crore yesterday as per provisional data from stock exchanges.
