Sensex sheds 150 points

In early trades it appeared that the market would continue its upward march as the Sensex opened with a positive gap of 46 points at 14449 and moved up to touch an intra-day high of 14467. However the Sensex came off its high on sustained selling pressure and remained subdued with a negative bias through the afternoon. The resumption of substantial selling towards the close saw a sharp fall in auto, banking, consumer durables and heavyweight stocks that dragged the Sensex to an intra-day low of 14230. The Sensex finally ended the session with losses of 150 points at 14253. The Nifty shed 58 points to close at 4107.

The breadth of the market was weak. Of the 2,630 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,892 stocks declined, 684 stocks advanced and 54 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE CD index dropped sharply and shed 1.58%. The BSE Auto index, the BSE Bankex, the BSE CG index, the BSE PSU index and the BSE Teck index were down around 1% each.

The fall in the Sensex was led by the heavyweights. ONGC slipped 3.24% at Rs876, Grasim slumped 3.01% at Rs2,571, Reliance Energy shed 2.76% at Rs521, HLL lost 2.66% at Rs200, HDFC was down 2.34% at Rs1,653 and Reliance Communication tumbled 2.34% at Rs452. Maruti, SBI and Wipro shed around 2% each. Among the gainers Ranbaxy rose 1% at Rs396. ITC, Cipla, NTPC and Tata Steel ended with modest gains.

Consumer durables stocks slipped sharply. Blue Star dropped 3.69% at Rs215, Gitanjali Gems declined 2.82% at Rs231, Titan Industries lost 2.55% at Rs955, Lloyd Electric slipped 2.49% at Rs166 and Videocon Industries closed with marginal losses.

Over 60.41 lakh Reliance Petro shares changed hands on the BSE followed by SAIL (33.41 lakh shares), HLL (26.87 lakh shares), IDBI (22 lakh shares) and Hindalco (21.09 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries was the most actively traded counter with a turnover of Rs165 crore on the BSE followed by HLL (Rs54 crore), Reliance Petro (Rs42 crore), TCS (Rs42 crore) and SAIL (Rs39 crore).