mumbai the rising concerns around the globein the us eurozone middle east and now the massive earthquake in japanare expected to weigh heavily on investor sentiments over the next few months and deter foreign fund managers from putting their money into the indian market having said that the earthquake in japan is unlikely to have any major impact on the indian market or on indian companies with operations in japan but dealers here feel investors will remain on the guard for any nasty shockson friday as the news of the earthquake hit the market dalal street too felt the tremors and the sensex dipped to an intraday low at 18063 but as traders realized the ramifications of the natural disaster the index recovered part of the losses to close at 18174 down 154 points on the day the days slide also made investors poorer by about rs 47000 crore with bses market capitalization now at rs 647 lakh crorefridays trading data showed that foreign funds have net sold stocks worth nearly rs 250 crore with this fiis have taken out about 3 billion on a net basis from the stock market so far this year they have also slowed down their trading activity in the market lately which is a sign that they are mostly keeping on the sidelines institutional dealers said going forward dealers said that portugal was again emerging as a spot of trouble within the eurozone which could soon like greece and ireland ask for a financial bailoutthats not all during the day global ratings major fitch warned that there could be further downgrades in europe in case the finance ministers of the currency block who are meeting on friday and saturday do not come out with a concrete plan to boost the eu economyon friday although the crude oil prices globally eased a bitmainly on talks that the demand for oil in the quakehit japan could fall leading to some ease in global demand market players feel that given the unrest in some of the major oil producing regions of the world the slide in prices could be shortlived on nymex crude prices slid below the 100 mark briefly and was trading at just above the threedigit mark at 2130 ist in the us markets there are concerns that a sudden slowdown in us feds bond buying plan could lead to a rise in benchmark yield which in turn will harden interest rate at a time when the economy has just begun to show signs of a turnaroundmost indian companies with operations in japan including it pharma and manufacturing that toi spoke to said that there was no physical damage to their facilities in the quakehit country top officials from lupin and ranbaxy said that their facilities in japan were not affected by the quake on friday and pharma stocks appeared pretty much resilient to the news of the natural disaster lupins subsidiary kyowa yakuhin located in sanda remained unaffected and all its personnel were safe