Sensex slips amid substantial volatility

The market continued correcting and shed 100 points for the day. The market began the trading session on a bearish note at 14168, down 22 points, and continued moving southwards as the trading session progressed. The Sensex managed to recover from its early losses in the afternoon on selective buying in several heavyweights. The sentiment turned extremely bearish after the Sensex touched the day's high of 14364 and the index slipped to the day's low of 13953. The Sensex pared some losses towards the close and ended the session at 14091, down 100 points. The Nifty shed 14 points and closed at 4045.

The breadth of the market was negative. Of the 2,604 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,480 stocks declined, 1,055 stocks advanced and 69 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices except the BSE PSU index and the BSE Oil & Gas index closed in the red. The BSE Metal Index led the slump and slipped 1.52% at 8485. The BSE Bankex declined 1.31% at 7267 and the BSE IT index was down 1.05% at 5367.

Among the Sensex stocks Hindalco plunged 4.92% at Rs142, Reliance Communications shed 3.07 % at Rs441, L&T declined 2.80% at Rs1,613, Tata Steel slipped 2.59% at Rs432 and Maruti fell 2.34% at Rs891. HDFC, HDFC Bank, Infosys, Cipla and BHEL were down 1-2% each. Among the metal stocks Hindustan Zinc slipped 2.42% at Rs621, Jindal Stainless declined 1.69% at Rs114 and Maharashtra Seamless lost 1.53% at Rs507. The banking stocks also felt the heat. UTI Bank tanked 6.37% at Rs518, Andhra Bank shed 2.26% at Rs82, Centurion Bank of Punjab slipped 1.97% at Rs35 and PNB dipped 1.64% at Rs484.

Over 56.42 lakh Hindalco shares changed hands on the BSE followed by SAIL (54.89 lakh shares), Gujarat Ambuja (48.12 lakh shares), Cairn India (39.76 lakh shares) and IDBI (38.03 lakh shares).

Value-wise Reliance Communications registered a turnover of Rs150 crore on the BSE followed by Hindalco (Rs81 crore), Gujarat Ambuja (Rs63 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs62 crore) and BHEL (Rs62 crore).