Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), a public sector company, saw its shares falling sharply after turning ex-bonus on Thursday (December 15). The stock was trading at Rs 203.25 at around 12.13 pm, down Rs 102.30, or 33.48 percent, on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
The company had declared bonus shares in the ratio of 1:2 (one bonus share for every two shares held) in October. Almost all the state-run companies in the oil and gas space, such as Oil India, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL) have declared bonus issue this year.
The BSE Sensex was trading at 26,545, down 58 points, while the NSE Nifty was at 8,165, a loss of 17 points.
Top Sensex losers apart from ONGC were Sun Pharma, Tata Motors and ITC, while top gainers included TCS, Power Grid Corporation and Infosys.
The US Federal Reserve's interest rate hike of 25 basis points did not have much of an impact, contrary to expectations by analysts.
The rate hike by the Federal Reserve is often followed by volatility in Indian stock and currency markets as a result of selling by foreign institutional investors (FIIs/FPIs) but the trend is reversed subsequently.
"After 2006 the U.S. Federal Reserve raised rates on December 16 last year, by 25bps, which was followed by a month of volatility and weakness in Indian equities with foreign portfolio investors pulling money out from both equity and debt markets and rupee weakening despite these outflows. However, the losses were reversed in six months with FPI's returning to the equity market while they continued to sell in the debt market," Geojit BNP Paribas said in a note on Thursday.
The Indian rupee opened at 67.76 to the US dollar on Thursday after closing the previous session at 67.44 levels.
