Market battered

The correction continued for the fourth consecutive session on inflation worries and rising interest rates. The dwindling foreign fund inflows into the domestic markets in the past few sessions also adversely affected the sentiment. After shedding around 200 points by mid-morning, the market remained in negative territory but came close to erasing its losses in the afternoon. However, the mood turned extremely bearish as widespread selling in banking, technology, fast moving consumer goods and auto stocks dragged the index below the 13600 mark to an intra-day low of 13568. The Sensex finally managed to pare some of its losses and close at 13633, down 389 points. The broad-based Nifty closed at 3939, down 101 points or 2.50%.

The breadth of the market was extremely negative with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of nearly 5:1 on the BSE. Of the 2,653 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,211 stocks declined, 404 stocks advanced and 38 stocks remained unchanged. All the sectoral indices on the BSE were hammered. The BSE Bankex was the worst hit and tanked 3.42% at 6760 followed by the BSE FMCG index (down 3.35% at 1786), the BSE Teck index (down 3.22% at 3704) and the BSE HC index (down 2.65% at 3611).

Barring Tata Steel, the rest of the Sensex stocks bore the brunt of heavy selling. Grasim led the slump and crashed 5.99% at Rs2,271. Among the other major laggards Bharti Airtel tumbled 5.72% at Rs756, ACC dropped 4.97% at Rs916, Wipro slumped 4.63% at Rs623, ITC fell 4.57% at Rs166, ICICI Bank declined 4.28% at Rs908, Dr Reddy's lost 4.08% at Rs682 and Reliance Communications shed 4.04% at Rs432. The other major front-line stocks shed 2-3% each. However, Tata Steel rose marginally at Rs459.

Banking stocks lost significantly on relentless selling. Oriental Bank of Commerce dropped 6.59% at Rs200, UTI Bank shed 5.33% at Rs491, Bank of India tumbled 4.97% at Rs158 and HDFC Bank declined 3.15% at Rs957. Punjab National Bank, Union Bank, Kotak Bank and Federal Bank shed 2% each.

Value-wise Power Finance Corporation registered a turnover of Rs450 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs180 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs114 crore).