With fears of early US Fed rollback of its bond-buying programme coming back to haunt the global markets, Indian markets ended in the red today.
The reason for the fresh fears over Fed tapering programme was that if the newest US private sector job data shows increased hiring, it might lead to US Fed Reserve, in its meeting later this month, taking a closer look at its bond-buying programme.
What has added further to the nervousness in the Indian bourses is the likely outcome of the Assembly elections in a few key states in the North and whether it would throw up any clear signals as to how the Lok Sabha polls would pan out.
The 30-share BSE index Sensex was down 146.21 points (0.7 per cent) at 20,708.71 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was down 40.9 points (0.66 per cent) at 6,160.95.
Tata Power, Wipro, Tata Steel, Jindal Steel and Infosys were the top five Sensex gainers, while the top five losers were Hindalco, ICICI Bank, ITC, ONGC and Tata Motors.
Among BSE sectoral indices, Power, Metal, IT and TECk indices remained investors' favourite and were up 0.31 per cent, 0.26 per cent, 0.09 per cent and 0.09 per cent, respectively.
On the other hand, Realty, FMCG, Auto and Capital Goods indices succumbed to selling pressure and were down 2.67 per cent, 1.36 per cent, 1.05 per cent and 0.99 per cent, respectively.
European stocks were little changed, after yesterday’s biggest decline in three months, as investors awaited reports on US jobs, services and home sales. Asian shares were down.
A slew of economic data are due in the next couple of days like new US home sales, third-quarter gross domestic product and November non-farm payrolls. The central bank will publish its Beige Book, which provides policy makers anecdotal accounts of business activity from the Fed districts.