By IANS
Mumbai : The Indian capital markets opened on a tenuous note Thursday taking cues from global and other Asian markets.
The markets witnessed a huge gap down, opening amid heavy selling pressures from all sectors across the board.
At 9:56 a.m., the benchmark sensitive index (Sensex) was down by 307 points at 18,962 and the broader S&P CNX Nifty was down by 126 points at 5,655. The south-bound trend in the market is likely to continue on the back of weak global indices.
The market is likely to remain under pressure following a sharp drop in the US market in yesterday’s trades and weakness among major Asian indices in the ongoing trades. Persisting offloading of equities from FIIs (foreign institutional investors) in the domestic market may also add pressure.
Credit market fears once again sent stocks reeling, as the Dow index plunged 361 points on Wednesday, marking one of its biggest declines of the year. The Nasdaq dropped 76 points to close at 2,749.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled 2.74 percent or 812.63 points at 28,896.30, Japan’s Nikkei fell 2.32 percent or 372.71 points at 15,723.97, Taiwan’s Taiwan Weighted plunged 2.96 percent or 275.41 points at 9,024.81, Singapore’s Straits Times was down 0.27 percent or 10.09 points at 3,673.01 and South Korea’s Seoul Composite declined 1.82 percent or 37.23 points at 2,005.96.
Barring Satyam, the remaining ADRs ended with heavy losses on the US bourses. VSNL, Rediff, HDFC Bank dropped over 6-7 percent each while Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, Infosys, VSNL, Dr Reddy’s, MTNL and Patni Computers were down over 1-5 percent each.
Crude oil prices inched lower, with the Nymex light crude oil for December delivery slipping by 33 cents at $96.37 a barrel. In the commodity segment, the Comex gold for December series jumped $10.10 to settle at $833.50 an ounce.
On Nov 6 this year, FIIs were net buyers of stocks to the tune of Rs.5.10 crore (purchases worth Rs.4,092.30 crore and sales of Rs.4,087.20 crore) while domestic mutual funds were net buyers of stocks to the tune of Rs.63.20 crore (purchases worth Rs.864.60 crore and sales of Rs.801.40 crore).
Among the top gainers on the index were GAIL up by 1.86 percent at Rs.466.05, Hindalco scaled up by 1.30 percent at Rs.191.05 and National Aluminium up by 1.10 percent at Rs.331.05.
Among the top losers were WIPRO down by 3.25 percent at Rs.462.75, HDFC BANK down by 2.26 percent at Rs.1580.30 and Sterlite Industries down by 2.21 percent at Rs.1,033.40