MUMBAI: Just as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented Budget for the year 2014-15, stock markets showed positive signs. However, by the end of the day it had fallen lower than its opening value. At 3:34 pm the Sensex closed at 25,372.75, down 72.06 points and Nifty ended trading at 7,567.75, falling by 17.25 points. Among specific sector indices Midcap index was up 0.35 per cent, Realty index up 4.67 per cent and Bank Nifty down 1.25 per cent. The IT index was down by 0.96 per cent while infrastructure index  was up by 0.15 per cent.

At 3:10 pm was when the Sensex turned negative and was down 81 points at 25,363. The  Nifty down 17.3 points at 7,568 but at 1:16 pm the Sensex was trading at 158 points higher at 25,603.61 and Nifty was up  by 45 points at 7,630.

At 1:00 pm the realty index was up by 1.05 per cent but at 12:20pm, the 30-share benchmark BSE sensex was down 139.75 points, or 0.6 per cent at 25,305.06 points

Sensex stocks like Wipro rose by 2.2 per cent while IT giant Infosys rose by 1.5 per cent.

Stocks of Sesa Sterlite fell by 2.5 per cent along with Bharti Airtel whose stocks were down by 2.4 per cent. The stock exchange’s power and banking indices were down by 1.5 per cent each.

Shares of defence companies and financial services companies, with interests in insurance, rose after Jaitley raised the cap for foreign direct investment (FDI) in these two sectors by up to 49 per cent.

Financial services firms Reliance Capital and Bajaj Finserv were up by 1.9 per cent each, while Max India rose by 2.7 per cent.

“Difficult as it may appear, I have decided to accept this target as a challenge,” Jaitley said, adding that the fiscal deficit would be brought down to 3 per cent of GDP by 2017. “We cannot leave behind a legacy of debt for our future generations.”