The Sensex fell on Friday 15th Mar,as private sector lenders were hit after the government and the RBI said that they would investigate allegations of money laundering practices,while S&P's comments that weaker growth was constraining ratings also weighed.
ICICI Bank fell 3.8 %, while HDFC Bank ended 1.1 % lower.
*The finance ministry P Chidambaram and the RBI are investigating allegations of money laundering practices at top private sector lenders ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.
*ICICI Bank Ltd, HDFC Bank Ltd, and Axis Bank Ltd said on 14th March, they were investigating the allegations but defended their internal controls aimed at preventing money laundering.
Shares of the three lenders fell on Friday with ICICI Bank down 4%, HDFC Bank down 1.7%, and Axis Bank down 0.9%.
Shares of the three lenders fell briefly on Thursday 14th March but recovered to end the session with gains following lower-than-expected core inflation data.
The Sensex provisionally fell 0.78 per cent, while the Nifty ended down 0.57 per cent.
The Indian equity market ended near day’s low on Wednesday amid heavy sell off seen in scrips across the sector. Market participants preferred to remain cautious ahead of the monthly inflation data to be released on Thursday.
The NSE Nifty has declined by almost 130 points or 2.1% in the past three trading sessions. In Today decline was led the Banking stocks,index heavy weights like SBI,ICICI Bank,Axis Bank and PNB were among the major laggards.
Barring the FMCG sector all the other major BSE sectoral indices ended in the red.
Among the other major losers were Consumer Durables, PSU, Auto and the IT stocks. Even the Mid-Cap and the Small-Cap stocks were under pressure.
Finally, BSE Sensex closed at 19362 with down 202 points over the previous close. It opened at day's high of 19511 for an intra-day low of 19338.
The NSE Nifty closed at 5851 with down 63 points over the previous close. It earlier touched a day’s high of 5893 and a day’s low of 5842.It opened at 5,884.
Sensex and Nifty gainers:
ITC, Sun Pharma, Tata Power, Bharti Airtel, Coal India, Hindustan Unilever
RIL, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Bajaj Auto, HDFC Bank, ONGC, Gail India, Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Hero MotoCorp, Maruti, Jindal Steel, Tata Steel
The advance decline ratio was in favour of the bears.1882 stocks declined against 1003 advancing stocks,while 128 stocks remained unchanged.
The INDIA VIX shot up by 7% to close at 16.20 for hit a day’s high of 16.43 and day's low of 14.69.
Stocks which hit 52-week high during the week were:
Madras Cements, Satyam Comp, Asian Paints,Rollatainers, Vapi Paper.
Stocks which hit 52-week low during the week were:
Apple Finance,BEML, Golden Tob,JCT Electronics, JCT
