Market slides sharply

The market succumbed to heavy selling on hectic profit booking in most of the front-line counters. The Sensex began the trading session with a positive gap of 36 points at 13972 and moved up to touch an intra-day high of 14010. The index soon lost ground and slipped sharply as the session progressed. Although the market recouped some of its losses in the afternoon, a fresh bout of selling saw the index slip below the 13800 mark to touch the day's low of 13757. The Sensex finally ended the session with losses of 173 points at 13799 while the Nifty shed 53 points to close at 3952.

Leading the slump Tata Motors shed 2.85% at Rs867. HLL dropped 2.73% at Rs234, Reliance Industries declined 2.53% at Rs1,267, ACC tumbled 2.48% at Rs1,105, ONGC dipped 2.41% at Rs841, Satyam slipped 2.11% at Rs457, Hindalco was down 2.07% at Rs180 and Bajaj Auto closed weaker by 2.03% at 2,649. Reliance Communication, Tata Steel, Hero Honda, HDFC Bank, TCS, Maruti Udyog and Wipro also closed in negative territory. Bucking the weak trend, Reliance Energy gained 2.42% at Rs555 and Dr Reddy’s advanced 2.33% at Rs775. SBI, Grasim Industries, Gujarat Ambuja, and Ranbaxy closed in positive territory.

i-flex surged 17.01% at Rs2,049, Polaris Laboratories soared 8.74% at Rs147, Geometric Software added 7.08% at Rs121 and Rolta India gained 4.29% at Rs264. Gujarat Industries Power, Mphasis BFL, IndusInd Bank, Asahi India and Indo Rama advanced 2-3% each.

The market breadth was negative on the BSE. Of the 2,655 stocks traded, 1,581 stocks declined, 1,016 stocks advanced and 58 stocks ended unchanged. The BSE Oil & Gas index was the major loser among the sectoral indices and shed 2.21%. The BSE Metal index declined 1.74% and the BSE Auto index was down 1.58%.

Over 35.32 lakh Reliance Communication shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Sterling Biotech (23.15 lakh shares), Parsvnath (21.69 lakh shares) and Polaris (21.01 lakh shares).

Reliance Communication clocked a turnover of Rs168.60 crore on the BSE followed by HDFC (Rs149.40 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs143.87 crore) and i-flex (Rs139.37 crore).