NEW DELHI: Banking and financial stocks pulled equity indices lower on Monday, taking overall market fall to third straight session.
Indian markets fell in line with global peers after China's December exports unexpectedly fell, pointing to weakness in world's second-largest economy, sparking fears of a global growth slowdown.
Weak macros in form of a losing rupee and poor factory output growth did not help cause of bulls.
The BSE Sensex dropped 156 points, or 0.43 per cent, to 35,854 while its NSE counterpart Nifty slipped 57 points, or 0.53 per cent, to settle at 10,738.
In Sensex heatmap, seven ended higher while 23 ended lower.
YES Bank was lead gainer with a rise of 5.98 per cent following appointment of Brahm Dutt as non-executive chairman of bank.
Reports were also doing rounds that Ravneet Gill, CEO of India, Deutsche Bank AG, is in race to succeed Rana Kapoor.Infosys gained 2.54 per cent post its December quarter results.
However, LT shed most at 2.64 per cent.
IndusInd Bank, Vedanta, Power Grid, NTPC and TCS were among other top losers, declining up to 2 per cent.Jet Airways surged 16 per cent and was one of top performers on BSE following reports that founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal is likely to step down from board of embattled company and give up majority control.
Meanwhile, Avenue Supermarts with a fall of over 11 per cent turned out to be biggest loser after as its profit for December quarter came in flat as against a growth of 10-18 per cent as expected by analysts.
Slow store addition added to investors' concerns.
Both midcap and smallcap indices fell in step with Sensex, weakening 0.49 per cent and 0.44 per cent, respectively.BSE Capital Goods, Utilities, Metals and Power were worst sectoral performers, declining over 1 per cent each.
IT was sole sector that rose today while BSE Teck remained unchanged.Factors that dragged markets lower:1.
Weak Chinese data Latest data from China showed imports fell 7.6 per cent year-on-year in December when analysts had predicted a 5 per cent rise, while exports dropped 4.4 per cent, confounding expectations for a 3 percent gain, according to Reuters.
This heightened concerns of a global growth slowdown and dented investor sentiment across globe.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific ex-Japan shares lost around 1 per cent while index of Europe's leading 300 shares slipped 0.7 per cent in early trade and Germany's DAX and France's CAC fell around 0.6 per cent.2.
Rupee trades lowerThe rupee weakened further against dollar and lost over 40 paise to hit intraday low of 70.89.
At time of writing this report, domestic unit was down 30 paise at 70.83 against greenback.3.
Factory output fizzles outIndustrial output growth dropped to a 17-month low of 0.5 per cent in November on account of contraction in manufacturing sector, particularly consumer and capital goods.
The previous low was in June 2017, when IIP growth contracted by 0.3 per cent.Expert-view:Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services "Early hiccups to Q3 results due to mixed outcome from IT and bank blue-chips negatively influenced domestic market.
Additionally, sharp fall in IIP and headwinds from global market due to slowdown in world economy, US shutdown and Brexit impacted sentiment.
Consolidation in domestic market was broad based as FIIs were on a selling mode while DIIs were on sidelines due to concerns over oil prices, weak rupee and fiscal deficit."