A sharp decline on budget disappointment has put the bulls on the back-foot

With most of the Asian indices opening flat all ended in red except for the Shanghai Composite and Nikkei 225. Thursday saw the lowest amount of FII inflow in the past five trading sessions while DIIs continued to be net sellers for third day in a row. Back home, the Sensex and Nifty, too, had a near flat opening at 17,657 and 5,380. The NSE saw the highest volume of 99.40 crore shares in the past 15 trading session (including today). Today's market move was one of the signs of increasing selling pressure. If the bulls don't make a comeback from the current level, we may Nifty headed towards 5,195.

On Thursday, US data showed new claims for unemployment benefits fell to a four-year low last week, and producer prices, excluding food and energy, were contained. Manufacturing data in New York and the US mid-Atlantic region also improved, according to regional Federal Reserve surveys.

The domestic indices were up before the budget session with all eyes set on the Union Budget 2012-13. Immediately on the onset of the session the indices went on to hit their intraday highs. The Sensex hit 17,871 while the Nifty rose to 5,446, however, both were at a lower high compared to yesterday. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee outlined expenditure plans for various segments such as agriculture, infrastructure, rural development and defence while presenting the budget.

He also proposed to cap the subsidy program that spans diesel to fertilizers and raised service and excise taxes to rein in the wide budget deficit. The government forecast that the fiscal deficit will decline to 5.1% of gross domestic product next fiscal year from 5.9% in the current year. The gap for the year through March 31 will be 5.9%, wider than the 4.6% target set a year ago. Modest targets for trimming a rising fiscal deficit saw the indices falling. Both the Sensex and the Nifty hit 17427 and 5,305 respectively, their lowest low this week .The Sensex fell 210 points (1.19%) to close 17,466 while Nifty fell 63 points (1.16%) to settle at 5,318. The past two trading day's losses wiped off the gains made earlier in the week.

The government also has more than doubled its target for a capital infusion into state-run banks to 158.9 billion rupees ($3.2 billion) for the year ending March 2013 as it sought to bolster risk buffers and boost credit growth.

At the time of writing the European indices were trading in the green and the US stock futures were also in the positive.

The advance-decline ratio on the NSE was in favour of the losers at 536:1169.

In the broader market space, the BSE Mid-cap index declined 0.68% and the BSE Small-cap index dropped 1.12%.

BSE Fast Moving Consumer Goods (up 1.91%) and BSE Auto (up 0.22%) were the only sectoral gainers. The top losers were BSE Oil & Gas (down 3.32%); BSE Power (down 2.98%); BSE Capital Goods (down 2.94%); BSE PSU (down 2.63%) and BSE Metal (down 2.22%).

The top Sensex gainers were TCS (up 3.65%); M&M (up 2.71%); Hindustan Unilever (up 0.59%); Maruti Suzuki (up 0.52%) and Coal India (up 0.44%). The key losers were Sun Pharma (down 7.09%); ONGC (down 4.66%); Jindal Steel (down 4.23%); NTPC (down 3.82%) and Tata Power (down 3.65%).

The Nifty was led by ITC (up 4.45%); M&M (up 3.43%); Ambuja Cements (up 1.94%); Maruti Suzuki (up 0.92%) and HUL (up 0.75%). The major losers were Sun Pharma (down 7.83%); Cairn India (down 6.60%); ONGC (down 5.43%); Siemens (down 4.49%) and NTPC (down 4.23%).

McNally Bharat Engineering Company has secured two orders aggregating Rs70 crore from VISAPower. The stock declined 3.09% to close at Rs98.75 on the NSE.

Godrej Properties has decided to offer and issue up to 7.44 million equity shares of face value of Rs10 each of the company, with a right to allot an additional up to 7.44 lakh equity shares in case of oversubscription, to eligible qualified institutional buyers by way of an institutional placement programme. The stock fell 2.84% to close at Rs648.25 on the NSE.