The market saw a decline from the second half of the trade. Advance tax payments by companies was pretty low descending by more than 22% for the quarter, which pointed towards a slowdown in earnings for the quarter. Also, the rising pressure across the boarder, too, brought the indices down, when the three defence chiefs met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give him a brief on the security situation in the neighbouring country, it is believed that an  assessment of the situation along Pakistan’s western borders and its impact on India was discussed in the meeting.

The domestic market made a good opening in the beginning of the new series of the derivatives contracts. Though there wasn’t much movement, the indices traded smoothly in the pre-noon session. Soon after the inflation figures were announced for the week ended December 13 though they came lower to 6.61% compared with 6.84% in the previous week, the downward movement of market began.

The drop in the inflation rate was visible across all segments, the biggest relief came from softening fuel prices reflected in whopping 3.7% decline in fuel and power index. Manufacturing items contributed 0.3% while rise in food articles’ prices softened by 0.5%.

Dipping inflation will also give the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) greater headroom to further ease monetary policy in order to bring interest rates down and push up investment to halt the downside journey of economy. In near term, bankers are expecting RBI to cut repo and reverse repo rates by at least 50 bps.

The ongoing decline in inflation and the rate cut expectation was not able to provide a momentum to the market and the low collection of advance tax, along with the fear of war, led the market plunge again. The BSE Sensex closed down by 239.80 points or 2.51% while the S&P Nifty closed lower by 59.60 points or 2.04%.

The 30 share BSE Sensex opened at 9,638.83, touched a high of 9,706.38 with a low of 9,294.98. The index finally closed at 9,328.92 down by 239.80 points or 2.51%.Finally there were merely 5 advances against 25 declines on the Sensex.

The overall market breadth too turned pretty weak at the closing with 34.16% advances against 63.11% declines.

HealthCare was the only sector that managed to close in the green, otherwise all sectoral indices closed in the red after initial gains. HC closed up by 0.50%.

The top losing sectors of the BSE were Information Technology (IT) down by 3.92%, Realty down by 3.82%, Consumer Durables (CD) down by 3.58%, Bankex down by 2.99%, and Capital Goods (CG) was down by 2.95%.

The top gainers of the Sensex were Maruti Suzuki up by 1.68%, Tata Power up by 0.50%, Satyam Computer up by 0.41%, Ranbaxy up by 0.30% and Grasim Industries marginally up by 0.28%.

The top gainers among the sectors were Moser Baer from Technology (TECk) up by 2.99%, Dena Bank from Public Sector Unit (PSU) up by 2.18% and RPL from Oil & gas up by 6.34%.

Reliance Industries (RIL) subsidiary, Reliance Petroleum, has commissioned its refinery in the special economic zone (SEZ) at Jamnagar, adjacent to its existing facility, in Gujarat that will add 20% to India’s total crude oil refining capacity.

The Rs 25,000-crore refinery, with processing capacity of 580,000 barrels a day, is the sixth largest refinery in the world. Together with the existing RIL’s refinery, the total capacity of the complex will go up to 1.24 million barrels a day, making it the largest at a single location.

Other gainers included Gujarat NRE Coke from Metal up by 2.20%, Cadila Healthcare from HealthCare (HC) up by 3.48%, Godrej Consumer Products from fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) up by 4.43%, Elecon Engineering from Capital Goods (CG) was up by 1.41%, Rajesh Export from CD up by 0.40%, the lone gainer from Bankex — Allahabad Bank up by 2.04% and Maruti Suzuki from Auto up by 1.68%.

The top losers on the Sensex were Reliance Infra down by 6.10%, DLF down by 5.97%, Infosys down by 5.33%, ICICI Bank down by 5.17% and M&M was down by 4.65%.

The sector specific top losers were Rolta India from TECk down by 10.18%, DLF from Realty down by 5.97%, Power Finance from PSU down by 5.30%, Aban Offshore from Oil & Gas down by 4.79%, Reliance Infra from Power down by 6.10%, Welspun Gujarat from Metal down by 6.42%, Wockhardt from HC down by 3.52%, Tata Tea from FMCG down by 2.53%, Punj Lloyd from CG down by 6.24%, Titan Industries from CD down by 4.47%, ICICI Bank from Bankex down by 5.17% and Bajaj Auto from Auto sector was down by 4.92%.

The top turnover gainers of the Sensex were Bharti Airtel with trades worth Rs 194.06 crore, Reliance Industries Rs 187.27 crore, DLF Rs 177.58 crore, Satyam Computer Rs 163.23 crore and SBI with trades worth Rs 139.73 crore.

The broader index S&P CNX Nifty opened at 2,919,.85 touched a high of 2,960.95 with a low of 2844.80 before finally closing at 2,916.85, down by 59.60 points or 2.04%.There were 13 advances against 37 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were RPL up by 6.74%, Zee Entertainment up by 2.56%, Sun Pharma up by 2.31%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.52% and Nalco was up by 1.01%.

The top losers on the index were DLF down by 6.60%, Reliance Infra down by 5.96%, Ambuja Cements down by 5.73%, Infosys Technologies down by 5.52% and ICICI bank was down by 5.35%.

The Asian market witnessed a jerky weather today, first made a sluggish start then turned into the green but finally closed mixed. Nikkei 225 closed up by 140.02 points or 1.63% to 8,739.52 and Taiwan Weighted gained 11.63 points or 0.26% to close at 4,425.08. On the other hand, Shanghai Composite declined by 0.90 points or 0.05% to 1,851.52 and the Straits Times declined by 11.38 points or 0.66% to 1,725.61.

The European market remained closed today on account of Christmas holidays.