Mumbai: After a day's breather, Indian stocks continued their downslide Thursday with benchmark Sensex tumbling 229.09 points to six-week low of 27,602.01 on sharp losses in RIL and ONGC after further drop in crude oil price.
Similarly, the 50-issue CNX Nifty of the NSE also plunged by 62.75 points, or 0.75 percent, to end below 8,300-mark for the first time after one and half months at 8,292.90.
In line fall in local equities, the Indian rupee fell to nine-month low levels of 62.3 against the greenback.
Weak Asian trends on the back of overnight steep fall on Wall Street amid slow down in capital inflows weighed on the stock market sentiment here.
Besides Oil & Gas, realty, IT, power and banking counters also suffered heavy losses while only some of the defensive pharma stocks attracted some buying interest.
Besides RIL and ONGC, Infosys, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, TCS, Tata Steel, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Power and Gail India suffered marked losses.
Brent crude oil fell to five-year low below USD 65 a barrel, putting pressure on oil companies.
The BSE 30-share barometer resumed lower on weak Asian cues and moved in negative terrain throughout the day before concluding at 27,602.01, a fall of 229.09 points or 0.82 percent. This is its weakest close since 27,346.33 on October 30.
Yesterday, Sensex had snapped a three-day falling trend as it recovered by about 34.09 points or 0.12 percent.
"Weak Asian markets and fresh fears from Euro region kept Indian markets volatile. Mixed sentiments on the back of weak rupee and lower oil too added to the volatility. FII liquidity outflow on the back of profit booking too added to weakness," said Hiren Dhakan, Associate Fund Manager, Bonanza Portfolio.
Investors were also cautious ahead of the release of Consumer Price Index-based inflation and Index of Industrial Production scheduled on Friday.
A total 11 out of 12 BSE sectoral barometers ended in the red. Market breadth was weak as about 1,750 stocks fell, 1,139 rose and about 100 ended flat.
Bucking the overall weak trend, sugar stocks were in limelight after government fixed higher price for ethanol procurement by PSU oil firms.
Asian bourses closed weak after Wall Street finished sharply lower overnight on the back of further oil price declines, while a worse-than-expected machinery orders report from Japan pushed the market lower.
Key indices in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea and Taiwan finished lower between 0.21 per cent and 1.49 percent.
Jignesh Chaudhary, Head of Research, Veracity Broking Services said: "Asian shares traded weak as concerns over the global growth dented the confidence of investors in equities".
European markets, however, were trading narrowly mixed in their late morning deals. The CAC was up by 0.05 per cent and the DAX by 0.27 percent while FTSE was down by 0.07 percent.
Meanwhile, Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) bought shares worth just Rs 5.39 crore as per provisional data.
In the domestic market performance today, 20 scrips out of the 30-share Sensex pack ended lower while 10 declined.
Major losers were ONGC (3.21 percent), Tata Steel (2.85 percent), Bharti Airtel (2.77 percent), Reliance Industries (2.76 percent), Tata Power (2.59 percent), GAIL (2.50 percent), Infosys (2.18 percent) and Hero Moto (1.88 percent).
NTPC (1.40 percent), Tata Motors (1.33 percent), ICICI Bank (1.30 percent), Cipla (1.10 percent) and Wipro (1.02 percent) also fell while Coal India rose by 1.00 percent, Hindalco 0.91 percent, Dr Reddy's Lab 0.86 percent and Maruti 0.53 percent, among others.
Among S&P BSE sectoral indices, Oil&Gas 2.48 percent, Realty 2.03 percent, IT 1.18 percent, Teck 1.05 percent, Power 1.93 percent and Auto 0.81 percent.
Total turnover rose to Rs 3,307.19 crore from Rs 3,040.59 crore yesterday.
