Indian share markets ended lower following a sell-off in Asian markets. At the closing bell, BSE Sensex ended down by 378 points, while, NSE Nifty ended down by 120 points.

All sectoral indices ended on a negative note with metal stocks, and energy stocks witnessing maximum selling pressure.

Among major movers, shares of Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank slumped, while Bank of Baroda shares jumped after BoB announced share swap ratio of their proposed merger.

Globally, Asian stock markets finished lower today with shares in Japan leading the region. The Nikkei 225 is down 0.3% while Hong Kong's Hang Seng is off 0.3% and China's Shanghai Composite is lower by 0.1%. European markets are lower today with shares in Germany off the most. The DAX is down 0.6% while France's CAC 40 is off 0.5% and London's FTSE 100 is lower by 0.1%.

Note that, Sensex closed the year at 36,068.

A year ago, on the last trading day of 2017, the Sensex had closed at 34,057.

That's a 6% gain for the Sensex in 2018.

For equities, that's not a good enough return. Your money could have done better parked in fixed deposits.

The Story of Sensex 2018

Most investors have seen their investments diminish in value during the year.

In fact, the total market value of all listed companies on the BSE declined 5% to Rs 144.1 trillion from Rs 151.7 trillion at the end of 2017.

In the news from the currencies space, Indian rupee weakened against US dollar today on account of strengthening of American currency amid sustained foreign fund outflows.

Further, fall in domestic equities also dragged down the domestic unit.

Though, falling crude oil prices capped rupee's losses. As per the reports, foreign funds pulled out Rs 6.2 billion from the capital markets on a net basis, while domestic institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 2.3 billion on Wednesday.

The rupee is currently trading at 70.39, weaker by 21 paise from its previous close of 70.18 on Wednesday. The currency touched a high and low of 70.53 and 70.30 respectively.

The reference rate for the dollar stood at 69.60 and for Euro stood at 79.96 on 2 January 2019.

Moving on to the news from the engineering sector. In the latest development, Larsen & Toubro's (L&T) construction arm, L&T Construction won orders worth Rs 10.6 billion.

The Smart World and Communication business has secured a major order from the Andhra Pradesh State FiberNet (APSFL) for Bharatnet Phase-II works to establish an IPMPLS Infrastructure covering the 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh.

The scope of the work involves the creation of a digital infrastructure-including-implementation, end-to-end integration, Disaster Recovery, Cloud-based Data Centre (DC) among others.

Another order has been secured from Pimpri-Chinchwad Smart City for the creation of a City Network Backbone and implementation of smart elements.

Notably, diversification continues to help L&T negotiate and get better terms and margins for projects. Apparently, this is because it is less desperate to win orders as compared to a company which are present in only a couple of sectors.

Its reputation, extensive technical prowess, and large skilled workforce have enabled L&T to command a certain premium from customers and vendors alike.

Whether further addition to these new projects provides a cushion to its profitability will be an interesting thing to watch out for going forward.

L&T share price ended down by 2%.