Market Close: Sensex limits fall to 230 points

Markets continued to be in the red but managed to cut the losses. As it has been the case for the last two day, Reliance continued to be the top draggers on Thursday.

After a volatile trading session, the market limited its downfall on Thursday. It was a much better trading session than the past two day. Many headline stocks posted a recovery. Thursday saw the seventh consecutive day of fall for the Indian benchmark indices Sensex, Nifty & Nifty Bank. The BSE Sensex closed at 37,558.91, down by 230.20 points or 0.61 per cent and Nifty50 was at 11,301.80, down by 57.65 points or 0.51 per cent. The popular index, Nifty Bank closed down by 109.80 points or 0.38 per cent at 28,994.40.

On a broader market basis, mid-caps displayed recovery and were down just marginally at 0.09 per cent and while small-caps followed the benchmark indices and was down by 0.47 per cent.

Among the top gainers on Nifty were ZEEL, Yes Bank, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv and Hero Moto. ZEEL led the toppers and was up by 8.40 per cent, while Yes Bank was up by 6.47 per cent. Among the top losers were Reliance, BPCL, Coal India, Asian Paint and Kotak Bank, down more than 3 to 2 per cent each.

Sectorally, most indices recovered and were in the green zone. Nifty Media led the recovery and was up by 3.58 per cent, mainly due a trend reversal in the Zee Group of companies; ZEEL, Dish TV, Zee Media. The other indices that were in the green were Realty, IT and FMCG down by 2.11 per cent. The Metal and Pharma were down by 1.43 per cent and 0.29 per cent, respectively.

Index heavyweights Reliance was dragging Sensex the most, contributing negative 140.65 points, followed by HDFC Bank and HDFC contributing negative 36.82 and 27.52 points, respectively. The other draggers were Kotak Bank and Asian Paints, contributing more than 15 points to the downfall.

Due to the loss of Reliance's market cap in the past few trading sessions, TCS overtook Reliance in terms of market capitalisation to become India's most valued listed company.