Sensex falls just below 16,000 level

Mayhem across the globe and sustained pull-out by foreign funds fueled a downward spiral as the benchmark sensex dipped just below 16K-mark after 15 months but later recover to end at 16,141.67, still down by 328 points. External events like lingering European debt problems that emerged concerns over the European banks and overnight murky US economic data which indicated that the world is going into another recession, mainly distressed the market sentiment globally.However, at home, higher inflation and rising interest rates, which might restrict the corporate profit growth, also continued weigh on the market.Barring realty, all other 12 sectoral indices ended down between 4.41 per cent and 0.39 per cent. IT index suffered a heavy blow after heavy downslide in their ADRs after Wall Street on Thursday recorded its biggest drop since US downgrade. Capital goods, teck, banking and consumer durable stocks too attracted heavy profit-booking. At the Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share bellwether index resumed with a downside gap of 230 points and remained in negative terrain throughout the day to settle at 16,141.67, a net fall of 328.12 points or 1.99 per cent over its 371 points or 2.20 per cent loss on Thursday. It logged a low of 15,987.77, level not seen since May 25, 2010 when it touched 15,960.15. Similarly, the NSE 50-issue Nifty also slumped by 98.50 points or 1.99 per cent to 4,845.65. It registered a low of 4,796.10 during intra-day trade. The Indian stock markets have been affected by the US market sentiments in the short term, even though the country’s economy is robust and its growth story is intact, the finance minister said in a statement released after market hours on Friday.Indian shares fell nearly 2 per cent on Friday to log their fourth straight weekly loss, their longest weekly losing streak since the Lehman collapse, as fears that the US economy was heading towards another recession and that some European lenders were facing a short-term funding crunch triggered risk aversion. The main 30-share BSE index, which is down 21 per cent this year, dropped 5 per cent on the week, extending its losses to 14 per cent in four straight weeks. “The effect of the market sentiments in the US and Europe has a bearing on our markets as well in the short term. In comparison to Asian markets, our performance has been better,” Pranab Mukherjee said.The steep sell-off in the Indian markets triggered by the economic crises in the United States and the euro zone had prompted a review of the global economic situation by top Indian policymakers including Mukherjee, central bank chief Duvvuri Subbarao and C. Rangarajan, a top adviser to the prime minister. From / Gulf Today