Indian equities on Friday ended the week on a negative note below the psychological 9000-mark. This was Sensex’s lowest closure in a month, joining a global market fall after depressing U.S. economic data indicated a deeper recession that would hurt global economic systems.
 
The market witnessed heavy selling pressure all through the day with BSE Bankex hit the most.

The top losers among the sectoral indices included Bankex, which lost 3.49%, IT declined 2.69%, Metal lost 2.67%, Tech down 2.21% and Oil & Gas was down by 2.17%.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap were down by 1.64% and 1.66% respectively.

The overall breadth of the market was sharply negative. Out of 2,499 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,637 turned down, 775 posted gains while the rest were unchanged.

The Sensex closed the day at 8,843.21, after posting a heavy loss of 199.42 points. It also touched an intra-day high of 8,943.78 and an intra-day low of 8,762.58.

On the other hand, the broad-based NSE Nifty dropped 52.90 points at 2,736.45. It also hit an intra-day high of 2,789.30 and an intra-day low of 2,709.30.  

The volume of business was very low on Friday. On NSE, the turnover, at Rs 6,459.71 crore, was lower by around Rs 280 crore than the turnover of Rs 6,739.07 crore the exchange had recorded during the earlier session.

During the week, the Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded stocks worth Rs13.48bn, whiereas the Domestic Institutional Investors sold stocks worth Rs6.75bn during the same period.

The major loser on the BSE was ICICI Bank, which lost more than 7%. RCom closed after losing 4.55%.

The stocks, which lost between 2% - 3.5% were Reliance Infrastructure, Tata Consultancy Services, Sterlite Industries, Reliance Industries, Mahindra & Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, HDFC, Tata Steel, Infosys Technologies, Jaiprakash Associates, Wipro, Grasim Industries and HDFC Bank.

Sun Pharmaceuticals, BHEL, SBI and ONGC lost more than 1% on Friday.

The stocks ended the week with modest losses were Bharti Airtel, DLF, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Tata Motors, while HUL and NTPC fell marginally.

HCL Technologies, Tata Communications, Punjab National Bank, Suzlon Energy, Relaince Capital, SAIL, Nalco, Reliance Power, Power Grid Corporation, Idea Cellular, Zee Entertainment, Unitech, Cipla, Reliance Petroleum, Ambuja Cements, Hero Honda and Siemens also closed negatively.

The major gainers’ list included ACC, which gained 0.85%, and Maruti Suzuki, which edged up by around a quarter per cent to Rs 633.40.

Nifty stock ABB ended with a sharp gain of 1.65% on the back of impressive quarterly results.

Asian stocks also closed weak as the expanding worldwide recession lifted bad-loan prices and upset profits.

Japanese benchmark index Nikkei dropped 141.27 points at 7,416.38. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index marked its closure at 12,699.17 after losing 324.19 points.

FTSE 100, UK’s benchmark index lost 97.03 points (2.41%) at 3,921.34.

French benchmark index CAC 40 fell 85.21 points at 2,787.39.

Germany’s benchmark index DAX declined 135.89 points at 4,079.32.