Weekly review: Sensex tumbles to 21-month low on heavy selling

Mumbai: Markets continued to fall for the second consecutive week due to persistent selling from operators and investors on concerns over global economy and weak results from banks.

"Relentless selling in the stock market is coming from redemption pressures, margin calls, crude slumping to multi- year lows, depreciating rupee against dollar and disappointing earnings," Hem Securities Director Gaurav Jain said.

Weak earnings from public and private sectors banks on account of higher provisioning for bad loans mainly affected the market sentiment, a broker said.

Putting the blame for the fall on global factors, the government sought to put a brave face saying the fall in market benchmarks this year has been just about 10 per cent as against much higher declines in other markets.

SBI reported a plunge of over 61.67 percent in its third-quarter net profits, while number of other banks have also reported weak results on worsening bad loan scenario.

Asian markets also traded weak following US Federal Reserve Janet Yellen's testimony which suggested that the bank is likely to continue on the gradual rate hike path.

The Sensex resumed slightly higher at 24,637.41 and moved up 24,698.85 on initial buying. But, tumbled afterwards to 22,600.39 before concluding at 21-month low of 22,986.12, showing a sharp fall of 1,630.85 points or 6.62 percent.

The Sensex had last quoted at 22,344.04 on May 9, 2014.

The Sensex has dropped by 1,884.57 points or 7.57 percent in two weeks.

The 50-share Nifty also tumbled by 508.15 points or 6.79 percent to close at 21-month low at 6,980.95.

The Nifty had last quoted at 6,858.80 on May 9, 2014.

The Nifty has also lost 582.60 points or 7.70 percent in two weeks.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares net Rs 2,788.57 crore during the week as per the SEBI's record including the provisional figure of February 12.

Back home, the broad market depicted weakness, the BSE mid-cap and small-cap indices dropped by 6.96 percent and 8.39 percent, respectively. The losses for both of these indices were higher in percentage terms than those for the Sensex.

Among the S&P BSE sector and industry indices, Realty dropped by 11.35 percent, followed by Capital goods 8.80 percent, Metal 8.21 percent, oil & gas 8.08 percent, IT 8.05 percent, Banking 7.69 percent, Teck 6.43 percent, Power 6.19 percent, FMCG 6.00 percent, Healthcare 5.79 percent, Auto 5.74 percent and Consumer durables 4.00 percent.

In the 30-share Sensex pack, all 30 stocks fell during the week.

Major losers were, Bhel slumped by 21.27 percent, the company reported net loss of Rs 1,101.99 crore in third quarter ended Dec 2015, followed by Adaniports 15.39, ONGC 12 percent, Tata Motors 11.45 percent, HDFC 8.72 percent, Dr Reddy Labs 8.45 percent, TCS 8.22 percent, SBIN 7.88 percent, HDFC Bank 7.86 percent, Infosys 7.78 percent, Larsen 7.54 percent, Wipro 7.31 percent, ITC 7.30 percent, Cipla 7.26 percent, ICICI Bank 7.17 percent and Coal India 6.96 percent.

The total turnover at BSE and NSE rose to Rs 14,268.51 crore and Rs 87,430.77 crore respectively, as against the last weekend's level of Rs 13,846.62 crore and Rs 84,978.59 crore.