Weekly Review: Sensex falls nearly 600 points; FIIs outflow continues

Lingering concerns over the passage of GST Bill in the ongoing Parliament’s winter session and factors such as interest rate hike worries by the US Federal Reserve next week, falling commodity prices, funds outflow by foreign institutional investors and bleak global cues dragged the key benchmark indices over 2 per cent down for the week ended December 11. This week Sensex and Nifty fell 593.68 points and 171.45 points to 25,044.43 and 7,610.45, respectively.

During the week, Cairn India (down 9.80 per cent), Punjab National Bank (down 8.60 per cent), Vedanta (down 8.50 per cent), Coal India (down 8.20 per cent) and YES Bank (down 7.60 per cent) slid the most in the Nifty pack.

Share price of Asian Paints, Tata Consultancy Services and NTPC advanced 2.70 per cent, 2.40 per cent and 1.80 per cent, respectively, during the week.

Barring the BSE IT index (up 0.54 per cent), rest all other sectoral indices settled the week in red. The BSE Metal index and BSE Realty index fell the most — 5.18 per cent each during the week. It was followed by BSE Auto index (down 3.56 per cent), BSE Capital Goods index (down 3.40 per cent), BSE Oil & Gas index (down 3.17 per cent) and BSE Power index (down 2.80 per cent).

Gaurav Jain, director, Hem Securities, said, “Sharp selling pressure across the world markets ahead of US Fed policy, continued fall in commodity prices worldwide raising concerns over global slowdown, continued selling pressure by foreign portfolio investors, logjam of winter session of Parliament, losing hopes of passage of GST Bill and weakening of rupee against dollar has butchered the indices during the week.”

According to the website of NSDL, foreign institutional investors or foreign portfolio investors remained net sellers in the equity market segment as they sold shares of worth Rs 3,124.31 crore this week.

IPOs of Dr Lal PathLabs and Alkem Laboratories got an overwhelming response during the week and were oversubscribed by 33 and 44 times, respectively. Jimeet Modi, chief executive officer, SAMCO Securities, said, “Vibrant primary markets are an indication that the underlying mood is positive though the secondary market is just dragging its feet in a negative vicious circle waiting for a positive spark to re-start the upward journey.”

Among the major events of the week, the Cabinet cleared the Real Estate Regulatory Bill 2015 giving far reaching rights and redressals to the consumers thus ending decades of builders’ dominance thereby creating an equitable platform for orderly growth of the entire real estate sector in the country.

The Reserve Bank of India said it is expecting the US Federal Reserve to raise rates next week by 25 basis points and it is prepared to meet any eventuality arising out of the decision. “The Fed has prepared the ground and we are expecting that it will raise rates anywhere between one and 25 basis points,” RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said after the central bank’s board meeting on Friday.

Essar Oil came out with a delisting offer with a floor price of Rs 146 giving an opportunity to the minority shareholders to exit at the discovered price which could be in the vicinity of the current market price.

GST panel finally suggested the rate of 18 per cent for a more fair and equitable tax incidence rate, clearing an important hurdle for passage of the Bill in the Parliament.

The Fed forward rate curves are now suggesting a 75 per cent probability of a move on the rates. The US Federal Reserve Chief, Janet Yellen said that she was looking forward to a US interest rate hike, which would signal to the world that the US has finally recovered from recession. “Concerns over a Fed rate hike have led to a selloff in risk assets over the last few weeks, with FIIs selling Indian equities worth $1.5 billion in the previous month. Volatility is expected to increase as we move towards the Fed’s December 16th policy meeting,” said Brijesh Ved, senior portfolio manager, equities, BNP Paribas Mutual Fund.