Markets End in Red

After a weak opening this morning (the Sensex opened at 18,262 down 122 points), the bourses continued their downward movement. The Sensex finally ended (provisional) with a loss of 263 points at 18,222. The NSE Nifty shed 75 points at 5463. The BSE benchmark dipped to its intra-day low of 18,059, as domestic political fears, and unabated tension in Libya dampened market sentiment. With an impending civil war in largest oil-producing African nation threatening to cut off oil supply to a significant degree, crude prices touched 2.5 year highs, thus prompting negative market sentiment due to a spike in commodity prices and inflation. The crisis in Libya has assumed such serious proportions that the US is contemplating tapping its own oil reserves in the face of scorching crude prices, which spiked above $106 a barrel, their highest ever since 2008. The broader markets under-performed the benchmark, as the BSE Mid-cap index declined 1.4% at 6,499, and the Small-cap, at 7,875, was down 1.5%. All the sectoral indices on the BSE were in negative territory, with the Capital Goods index losing 2.3% at 12,653, the Auto index at 8,733 and Realty at 2,035 both down 2%.