Markets drop sharply as political impasse, GDP figures weigh

Commentary

oi-Sunil

By Sunil Fernandes

Updated: Thursday, September 20, 2012, 16:06 [IST]

Markets witnessed large scale selling pressure to end the day lower after a continued logjam in parliament and better than expected GDP numbers pulled indices lower.

The S&P CNX Nifty shed more than 56 points to end at 5258 points, while the BSE Sensex lost 160 points (provisional). Shares that rallied in the last few trading sessions, saw heavy profit booking with Hindustan Unilever dropping almost 2% and TCS dropping more than 1.4%.

Among the other index stocks that lost heavy ground today were Tata Steel, Tata Motors and Hero Motor Corp. Sterlite Industries dropped more than 3%, while heavy weights Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank fell more than 2%. Infrastructure lender IDFC shed more than 4% in trade today.

Bharti Airtel and HDFC were amongst the few stocks that ended the day in the green. RCF gained more than 2%, after reports that the company will invest Rs 4000 crore over next three years to ramp up urea capacity at Thal plant near Mumbai .

NTPC lost more than 2%, following news that the company had slashed investments by Rs 50,000 crore, due to coal supply uncertainty.

The higher than expected GDP numbers disappointed the markets today, as there was a belief that the numbers would now encourage the RBI to leave repo rates unchanged.

Going forward markets are expected to continue to exhibit volatility and may trend downward following the lack of reforms, due to the political deadlock in parliament.

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