The market opened on a positive note this morning, bucking the global trend, but it soon turned negative in range-bound trade. Huge selling pressure saw resulted in the indices closing with sharp cuts of over 1%.

The market opened in the green, despite the global markets hovering in no man’s land.  It witnessed subdued morning session ahead of the release of the weekly inflation data, trying its best to push its head above the neutral line. However, strong selling pressure pushed the indices lower, with the market closing over 1% lower.

The Sensex tanked 227.76 points (1.11%) to close at 20,315. The index touched a high of 20,581 and a low of 20,272 during trade today. The Nifty tumbled 66.15 points (1.07%), settling at 6,120. The benchmark scaled a high of 6,199 and a low of 6,107, intraday.

The losers outnumbered the gainers in today’s session. The Sensex ended with 23 stocks in the red and seven advancing stocks. The Nifty list had 42 losers against eight gainers. Among the broader indices, the BSE Mid-cap index lost 0.68% and the BSE Small-cap index declined 0.89%.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Power (up 2.48%), Hero Honda (up 1.18%) and Cipla (up 1.16%). The losers were led by Tata Steel (down 4.20%), DLF (down 3%), Reliance Infrastructure (R-Infra) (down 2.95%), HDFC (down 2.50%) and BHEL (down 2.36%).

 BSE Healthcare (HC) was the lone gainer in the sectoral arena, up 0.34%. The top sectoral losers were BSE Realty (down 2.80%), BSE Metal (down 1.70%), BSE IT (down 1.30%), BSE Capital Goods (CD) (down 1.26%) and BSE Consumer Goods (CD) (down 1.10%).

Food inflation fell marginally to 16.24% for the week ended 25th September, on slight easing of supply side pressures, even as prices of cereals, fruits, select vegetables and milk remained high.

After rising for the fifth straight week, food inflation declined by 20 percentage points during the week. The inflation figures were at 16.44% for the week ended 18th September.

The Asian markets closed mostly lower as corporate earnings were lower-than-expected and on the decline in the US job market. South Korean electronics major Samsung Electronics reported third-quarter operating income of 4.8 trillion won ($4.3 billion), short of the 5.03 trillion won that analysts expected.

Hang Seng was up 0.02% and KLSE Composite gained 0.12%. On the other hand, Jakarta Composite was down 0.48%, Nikkei 225 fell 0.07%, Straits Times declined 0.73%, Seoul Composite shed 0.16% and Taiwan Weighed ended flat, down 0.11 points.

Wall Street settled mixed on Wednesday on earnings concerns. Technology stocks led the decline on the Nasdaq led by Citrix Systems and Equinix Incorporated. Besides, Morgan Stanley downgraded some tech companies to ‘underweight’ on worries about a slowdown in Asia. In economic news, the ADP Employer Services report said private payrolls fell by 39,000 in September, underscoring concerns about the weak labour market. The Dow rose 22.93 points (0.21%) to 10,967. The S&P 500 was down 0.78 points (0.07%) to 1,159. The Nasdaq fell 19.17 points (0.80%) 2,380.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of equities worth Rs1,842 crore on Wednesday. Domestic institutional investors were net sellers of stocks worth Rs976 crore on the same day.