The two day positive rally came to end today as the S&P Sensex and Nifty 50 both ended red. The exposure of additional Rs. 1322 cr to the existent PNB scam of Rs. 11,400 cr pulled the banking stocks, especially PSU banks down. The PNB share tanked 12.11% to end at Rs 98.35 at the end of the trading session.

The S&P BSE Sensex was down by 0.29% to end at 34.3465.39 while the Nifty50 closed at 10,554.30 by losing 0.87%. Through the course of the day, the S&P BSE Sensex dropped 99.36 points while the Nifty50 lost 28.30 points.

“It was a volatile day on the bourses as stock markets in India oscillated between the positive and negative zones. A bout of profit booking and selling pressure by cautious investors dragged the indices lower into negative territory to finally close the day with losses of nearly 0.25%. While the FMCG and IT indices on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) eked out marginal gains in today’s trading session, banking shares in general and PSU banking stocks in particular buckled under selling pressure”, said Mr. Karthikraj Lakshmanan, Senior Fund Manager-Equities, BNP Paribas Mutual Fund. At the end of the day the trading session, the Nifty Volatility Index (VIX) was up by 0.23 points to conclude at 13.92.

“Investors chose to adopt a more defensive stance with one eye on the US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's highly-anticipated testimony, later in the global day”, he added.

Bhart iAirtel, DrReddy, Reliance, and HeroMotoCop were among the top gainers while Axis Bank, State Bank of India and SunPharma were major losers. Sectorally Banking, Finance, Metal, Realty and Basic Materials ended on a negative note and, energy and telecom performed well.

The BSE Midcap lost 0.50% to conclude at 16,601 and the BSE Small cap ended at 0.35% low to end the trading session at 18,090.

At the end of the trading session, the net value withdrawn by the foreign investors was Rs 906.86 Cr while the net value invested by the domestic investors was Rs 1046.67 Cr. In comparison to yesterday, the relatively modest investment by the Domestic Investors was ahead of the release of key macro economic data like GDP numbers for the month of December, fiscal deficit and manufacturing data.

Among the global markets, Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng ended red, Nikkei closed green while at the time of writing this FTSE 100 and DAX were red.

Meanwhile, among in the precious metal section, gold gained 0.03% by closing on Rs 30,540 while crude oil prices dipped 0.43% to end at Rs. 4,137.

Yield on 10 year benchmark Government securities softened by 2 basis points.