Share market snap seven-day rally; Sensex falls over 200 points

Mumbai: Benchmarks Sensex and Nifty snapped their seven-day run in early trade on Thursday amid selling pressure from foreign institutional investors and tracking cues from Asian markets.

Analysts said, receding crude oil prices in international markets failed to boost sentiment as investors turned to book profit ahead of RBI's monetary policy decision.

The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 211.21 points, or 0.30 per cent, to 69,442.52. The broader index Nifty also declined 58.95 points, or 0.28 per cent to 20,878.75.

Among major Sensex constituents, Hindustan Unilever, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank and Bajaj Finance were the laggards and traded with a loss of up to 2.03 per cent.

Meanwhile, the company that defied the broader market trend were PowerGrid, that rose 1.25 per cent, followed by UltraTech Cement (1.07 per cent), Asian Paints (0.96 per cent) and NTPC (0.76 per cent). Other gainers included Maruti, Kotak Mahindra Bank and HCL Tech.

As many as 18 shares of the 30-stock Sensex were trading in red, while 24 Nifty firms saw loss in early trade.

On Wednesday, Sensex surged 357.59 points, or 0.52 per cent, to settle at a new record of 69,653.73. The broader index Nifty also climbed 82.60 points, or 0.40 per cent, to hit its fresh peak of 20,937.70.

Foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 79.88 crore on Wednesday, according to exchange data.

According to V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, in spite of favourable factors such as steady decline in US bond yields, India's GDP growth rate, declining crude price and political stability, "there will be dips in the market triggered by profit booking at higher levels".

The Reserve Bank of India is expected to maintain the status quo on the interest rate in its bi-monthly monetary policy decision to be announced on Friday.

Meanwhile, in Asian markets, Nikkei 225 was trading lower by 1.79 per cent.

European markets finished broadly higher on Wednesday. France's CAC 40 closed 1.71 per cent higher and Germany's DAX ended 0.75 per cent higher. London's FTSE 100 gained 0.21 per cent, The US markets ended on a mixed note on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 registering a loss of 0.39 per cent, while Brazilian stocks gained 0.08 per cent.

On Thursday, global oil benchmark Brent crude was trading 0.47 per cent higher to USD 74.65 a barrel.