Indian stock markets, on Monday, belled the day on a negative note as weak worldwide signals and earning fears weighed down the overall reaction.

Continued selling action witnessed across IT and auto stocks pulled the bourses deeper into the pessimistic zone.

The Sensex touched an intra-day low of 16,705.56 and continued to languish in the negative for most of the day. However, it bounced back in the positive terrain during mid-noon trades and recovered around 172 points.

With Tuesday being a national holiday, worries of worldwide markets' reaction saw dealers cut short their long positions.

Finally, the 30-share index Sensex closed the day after losing 79.22 points to 16,780.46. On the other hand, the broad-based Nifty marked its closer at 5,008, down 28 points.

In the process, the Sensex went down for the fifth successive day, down 861 points during the period.

Among sectoral indices, the BSE realty index fell 3% to 3,648.15 and the auto index lost 2.14% at 7,243.92. In contrast, the FMCG index remained up after surging 1.14% to 2,803.73.

The stock of auto major Mahindra & Mahindra declined 5.24% to Rs 1,073, in spite of the company reporting a net profit of Rs 413.7 crore, which turned out to be lower than market anticipations.

Other losers' included JP Asso, which lost 3.27%, DLF down 2.77%, Tata Steel declined 2.24% and Sterlite dangles 1%.

The major gainers of the day included Bharti Airtel, which surged 2.86%, HUL, ITC & L&T gained 1-2%.

Jai Corp topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 214.6 crore and Cals Refineries led the volume chart on the BSE with trades of 17.17 million shares.