Mumbai: Stock markets surrendered early gains and settled lower in volatile trade on Tuesday with Sensex losing 166 points and Nifty ending below the 24,000 level due to fag-end selling in banking and telecom stocks.
Falling for the third straight day, the 30-share BSE Sensex settled at 78,593.07, down 166.33 points or 0.21 per cent, as 17 of its constituents declined and 13 gained.
The index opened sharply higher and rallied further 1,092.68 points or 1.38 per cent to a high of 79,852.08 on value-buying by investors driven by a rebound in Japanese and other Asian stocks.
However, the barometer faltered later and hit a low of 78,496.57 as banking shares came under selling pressure ahead of the RBI policy decision on Thursday.
Market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms tumbled Rs 22,02,996.27 crore to reach Rs 4,39,59,953.56 crore ($5.24 trillion) in three trading days.
Similarly, the NSE Nifty declined 63.05 points or 0.26 per cent to settle below the 24,000 level at 23,992.55. The index surged 327 points or 1.35 per cent to 24,382.60 in intra-day trade but failed to hold onto gains.
Sensex and Nifty has declined for the third straight day, losing more than 4 per cent as weak jobs data fanned fears of possible recession in the US market.
From the Sensex pack, State Bank of India, Mahindra & Mahindra, Bharti Airtel, Titan, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank and Bajaj Finance were the biggest laggards.
JSW Steel, Tech Mahindra, Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Unilever, HCL Technologies and Reliance Industries were among the gainers from the pack.
In the broader market, the BSE midcap gauge declined 0.71 per cent and smallcap index went lower by 0.57 per cent.
Among the indices, telecommunication dropped 1.15 per cent, financial services by 1.03 per cent, consumer durables by 0.92 per cent, bankex by 0.76 per cent and consumer discretionary by 0.48 per cent.
IT, realty, FMCG and services were the gainers.