Sensex plummets 172 points

Sensex Open:13691 High:13691 Low:13577

The market received a pounding and erased most the gains accrued last week. The Sensex resumed 83 points below its previous close at 13691 and moved down to touch an intra-day low of 13577. The market languished in negative territory through the rest of the session and the Sensex closed with losses of 172 points at 13602. The Nifty also ended in the red at 3922, down 47 points.

The market breadth was weak. Of the 2,636 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,463 stocks declined, 1,091 stocks advanced and 82 stocks ended unchanged. Barring the BSE IT index, all the sectoral indices ended at lower levels. The BSE Teck index fell 2.02%, the BSE Bankex dipped 1.45%, the BSE Metal index shed 1.63% and the BSE PSU index was down 1.11%.

Among the draggers, Reliance Communication dropped 3.11% at Rs418, Satyam Computers shed 3.08% at Rs450, Reliance Energy tumbled 2.84% at Rs531, Infosys declined 2.71% at Rs2,167 and NTPC was down 2.66% at Rs150. Wipro at Rs586, ICICI Bank at Rs862, Cipla at Rs255 and Tata Motors at Rs811 were down around 2% each.

Select index heavyweights managed to register decent gains. SBI rose 1.32% at Rs1,293, Hero Honda gained 1.22% at Rs742, Grasim was up 0.81 at Rs2,715, Maruti Udyog added 0.33% at Rs913 and Gujarat Ambuja was marginally up at Rs143.

IT stocks came under sharp hammering. Megasoft slumped 6.47% at Rs105, Mascom Global lost 4.46% at Rs8, Kernex Micro declined 4.04% at Rs181, GTL tumbled 3.65% at Rs123, Cranes Software was down 3.81% at Rs105 and HCL Technologies closed weaker by 3.26% at Rs620. Prithvi Info, Geometric Software, Hexaware, Subex Azure and Visual Software dipped 2-3% each.

NTPC clocked huge volumes of over 47.25 lakh shares followed by Lanco Infra (26.84 lakh shares), Adani Enterprises (24.68 lakh shares), India Cements (17.07 lakh shares) and Sterlite Optical (16.70 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries clocked a turnover of 129.49 crore on the BSE followed by Jaiprakash (Rs85.46 crore), Punj Lloyd (Rs77.20 crore), NTPC (Rs71.92 crore) and Reliance Capital (Rs64.81 crore).