India’s Sensex Drops for Eighth Day on Growth, Earnings Concern

Indian stocks fell for the eighth day, the longest losing run in about 15 months, amid economic growth and corporate earnings concern.

The BSE India Sensitive Index, or Sensex, slid 0.1 percent to 19457.28, according to preliminary closing prices in Mumbai. Housing Development Finance Corp., India’s biggest mortgage lender, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., the largest engineering company, and Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., the country’s biggest carmaker, all declined more than 1 percent each.

The Sensex has slid for eight straight days, the longest streak since November 2011, as a government economic expansion forecast disappointed investors and earnings from some of the nation’s biggest companies trailed estimates. The government raised $2.7 billion this month selling stakes in two state-run companies, deals that absorbed bulk of the $3 billion in net inflows into stocks this month from foreign investors.

“Much of the flows have gone into the substantial amount of fresh capital raised recently and the secondary market has not received that much money,” Saurabh Mukherjea, director of institutional equities at Ambit Capital in Mumbai, said in an interview to Bloomberg TV India. “We are also at that stage of the economy where everyone wants to see evidence of recovery taking hold. Weak macroeconomic data makes people nervous.”

Data on December factory production and January wholesale prices are due tomorrow and Feb. 14 respectively. The nation’s gross domestic product may expand 5 percent in the year through March 31, below last year’s 6.2 percent and the least since 4 percent in 2002-2003, the state-owned statistics bureau said in a Feb. 7 statement.

To contact the reporters on this story: Rajhkumar K Shaaw in Mumbai at rshaaw@bloomberg.net; Santanu Chakraborty in Mumbai at schakrabor11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Darren Boey at dboey@bloomberg.net