Capital market continued its free fall for the fifth day in a row. The benchmark Sensex shed 94 points to 20,693 on Tuesday as weakness in global markets and profit booking in bluechip stocks led to heavy selling.
Besides, the market sentiment turned negative after SEBI data showed foreign institutional investors have sold shares worth Rs 267 crore into the secondary equity markets on Monday.
Sensex opened on the higher side at 20,846 against the previous close of 20,787. It hit the day’s high of 20,890 and touched a low 20,637 during the course of trading on Tuesday. The total turnover on BSE was down marginally at Rs 2,338 crore against Rs 2,388 crore recorded on Monday.
On NSE, Nifty was down 29 per cent at 6,162.
Financial software maker Financial Technologies, which is facing tough time after its subsidiary NSEL defaulted to settle trade worth Rs 5,600 crore, hit an upper circuit limit of 10 per cent to Rs 271.45 after it became clear that the company may not have to sell of its 5 per cent holding in MCX Stock Exchange as directed by market regulator SEBI.
Other major gainers were Suzlon Energy (6%), Essar Oil (5%), MCX (4%) and Videocon Inds (3%).
Prominent loser were Shriram Transport (-4%), Adani Enter (-4%), GMR Infra (-4%), Mahindra & Mahindra Finance (-4%) and TV18 Broadcast (-4%).