Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange closed weak for the fourth straight session on Thursday with the Sensex shedding 259 points on across-the-board selling, triggered by weakness in Asian and European bourses following a sharp decline in US on Wednesday.

Marketmen attributed the reason for the downfall in markets around the world to surging global crude oil prices, which traded near its all-time record at $123.5 a barrel in Asian trade.

The 30-share BSE barometer settled at 17,080.65,a fall of 258.66 points, or 1.49 per cent, from its last close.

The broader 50-share SP CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange also dipped 53.80 points, or 1.05 per cent, to close at 5,081.70.

Marketmen said investors fear high oil prices may widen trade deficit and in turn further push up inflation, which is already in uncomfortable zone of over seven per cent.

There absence of a positive trigger after the completion of earnings season in April was also a factor, they added

IT sectors after hogging limelight in the past two session, faced investors' wrath, rupee posting major gains against the US dollar.

Infosys Technologies was down 3.44 per cent, Satyam Computer 3.72 per cent, TCS 2.33 per cent.

Other major Sensex losers were ITC 5.24 per cent, SBI 2.17 per cent, ICICI Bank 3.0 per cent, HDFC Bank 2.24 per cent, LT 3.36 per cent, Reliance Infrastructure 2.93 per cent Jaiprakash Associates 2.09 per cent, ONGC 1.09 per cent and DLF 1.11 per cent.

Tata Steel bucked the trend to gain 2.51 per cent after touching a low of Rs 811 on reports that the company has raised sizeable funds through redeemable non-convertible rupee debentures.

Reliance Power also surged by 2.02 per cent, continuing its rally after the company fixed June 2 as the record date for its bonus issue on April 25.

Except China, other Asian indices ended in the red and European markets, which opened this afternoon, were also trading in the negative territory.

The market breadth remained negative with 1,592 losers against 1,104 gainers.

The trading volume fell sharply to Rs 5,965.87 crore from Rs 6,622.02 crore on Wednesday. Aishwarya Telecom closed the highest turnover for the second consecutive day at Rs 722.22 crore followed by Reliance Power (Rs 250.46 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs 171.72 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 160.79 crore) and Cairn Ind (Rs 155.40 crore).

The broad-based BSE-100 index fell sharply by 129.54 points to 9,076.93 from its previous close of 9,206.47.

The BSE-200 index and the Dollex-200 were quoted down at 2,132.10 and 850.84 at close compared to their last close of 2,160.64 and 883.15 respectively. The BSE-500 index dropped by 84.51 points to 6,812.75 from 6,897.26 and the Dollex-30 ended lower at 3,361.26 from 3,494.93.

Source : PTI