FIIs withdraw Rs 157 cr from markets

The last fortnight witnessed many of the FII reshuffling their portfolios replacing some new economy stocks with that of old economy ones mostly from refinery, pharmaceutical, cement and banking sectors. The cabinet decision to reduce centre’s stake in banks to 33 per cent resulted in a spurt in banking scrips.

Indian stock markets failed to take off and ended in the negative territory in the bygone week. The benchmark Sensex made another bid to close above 4000 level — perceived to be a crucial resistance — for the second successive settlement period and ended in negative territory on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) during the week as concerns over rising crude prices and weak global markets triggered selling pressure.

Sensex had risen to a high of 4046 last week before falling far below the 4000-mark and again crossed this level to 4016.09 but reacted sharply reflecting negative trend in heavyweight like Infosys Tech and some old economy stocks.

Global markets, particularly the Nasdaq Composite Index that was continuously giving confusing signals and had been adversely reacting to day-to-day developments in the US Presidential elections, were under pressure due to worries about interest rates having prospect of a hike and earnings. “The slowdown in FII activity fuelled unloading by operators,” said a broker.

Bank shares had turned volatile on the government’s decision to bring in a legislation to reduce its equity to 33 per cent in state-owned banks without losing any government control. This sector, however, failed to sustain a rally on apprehensions that the decision would not benefit the nationalised banks much.

In spite of a majority of index-based shares being in the positive territory, losses in leading counters like Infosys Technologies, HLL, MTNL, RIL and TELCO accounted for the Sensex’s adverse performance.

Sensex showed fairly good activity fluctuating irregularly in a range of 4016.09 and 3797.50 before ending the week at 3905.84 as against last weekend close of 3941.13, a net fall of 35.29 points. The BSE-100 index also eased fractionally by 3.82 points to close the week at 2010.20 from preceding weekend’s close of 2014.02.