Mumbai: Equities continued to spiral down and remained bearish for the sixth-straight day as select selling in frontline blue chips pulled down the Nifty by 22 points.
After a lacklustre start, trading mostly confined to a tight range for the most of the day with a negative bias.
However, good buying support from financials and banking counters following RBI's new strategic debt restructuring norms mainly helped cushion the market fall with the benchmark Nifty balancing near the 8000-mark.
Elsewhere in Asia, equities plunged sharply on the back of dismal set of economic data from Asia's second largest economy, China amid speculation over the Federal Reserve tightening monetary policy as early as September.
The broader 50-share barometer fluctuated between a high of 8,057.15 and a low of 8,005.15 before ending at 8,022.40, showing a fall of 21.75 points, or 0.27 percent.
Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NSE by 925 to 554 and 57 ended unchanged.
Among the sectoral indices, Healthcare fell sharply by 1.77 percent led key heavyweights. It was followed by realty, Technology, Auto, Fmcg, Infra, Media and Energy.
However, good buying interest in PSU, private banking and metal space helped the respective indices to end in positive zone. Midcap and smallcap indices also ended modestly weak.
The major index laggards included ITC, Bosch, Sun Pharma, Dr Reddys, ONGC, Kotak Bank, L&T, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, TechM, Asian Paints, Cairn, Bajaj Auto, HCL-Tech, Maruti, Zee, HDFC Bank, Bharti Artel, Reliance, Heromotoco and Lupin.
Among the notable gainers were ICICI Bank, HDFC, Tata Motors, SBI, Axis Bank, Vedanta, HUL, Power Grid and Hindalco.
In stocks specific development, Nestle share rebounded to gain 7.10 percent to end at Rs 5,964.35 on value buying following recent sell-off. Sun TV also regained some lost ground to end at Rs 291 after overnight 21.82 percent plunge.
Turnover in the cash segment rose to Rs 13,569.95 crore compared to Rs 12,894.29 yesterday.
A total of 6,880.12 lakh shares changed hands in 67,40,393 trades and the total market capitalisation of the NSE stood at Rs 94,69,420 crore.
