The Sensex and the Nifty fell over 0.4 per cent at the closing session on Wednesday owing to sluggish industrial production and higher consumer inflation numbers.
The 30-share BSE index Sensex was down 87.51 points (0.43 per cent) at 20,194.40 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was down 28.45 points (0.47 per cent) at 5,989.60.
Barring auto, consumer durables, metal and PSU, all other BSE sectoral indices ended in the red. Among them, realty index fell the most by 1.14 per cent, followed by FMCG 0.98 per cent, IT 0.65 per cent and banking 0.62 per cent.
On the other hand, auto index was up 0.47 per cent, followed by consumer durables 0.22 per cent, metal 0.19 per cent and PSU 0.11 per cent.
Hindalco, Tata Steel, M&M, Sun Pharma and Tata Motors were the top five Sensex gainers, while the top five losers were Cipla, GAIL, SSLT, Hero MotoCorp and HDFC Bank.
Dhananjay Sinha, Head-Institutional Research, Emkay Global Financial Services, in a report, said: “With several unrelenting upside risks to inflation, we believe, there is a hardening bias to our policy rate view with another 25 basis point hike in repo rate in the upcoming policy announcement.”
The Index of Industrial Production released yesterday for the month of September grew at below-market-estimates of 2 per cent versus 0.43 per cent in August.
The Consumer Price Index further disappointed the markets as it came in at double digits at 10.09 per cent compared with 9.84 per cent in September.
European stocks were down as investors weighed corporate earnings and awaited euro zone industrial output data. Asian stocks were down as China’s Communist Party leaders failed to outline steps to curb state dominance of the economy.
US stocks had ended lower yesterday as corporate earnings and an improving economy fuelled speculation the Federal Reserve will start reducing its $85-billion-a-month stimulus programme from as early as next month.