Market slides sharply

Selling pressure in most of the heavyweights saw a sharp downmove in the Sensex.
The market succumbed to heavy selling pressure on profit booking in most of the front-line counters. The Sensex began the trading
session with a positive gap of 58 points at 13107 and moved up to touch an intra-day high of 13146. 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 12800 mark and touch the day's low of 12788. The Sensex finally ended the session with losses of 164 points at 12885 while the Nifty shed 44 points and closed at 3718.

Leading the slump Grasim Industries plunged 7.43% at Rs2,069. ACC dropped 6.30% at Rs781, BHEL declined 3.68% at Rs2,095, ITC tumbled 3.44% at Rs154, Cipla dipped 3.19% at Rs229, Hindalco slipped 3.14% at Rs128, Gujarat Ambuja was down 2.61% at Rs110, Reliance Communication closed weaker by 2.60% at 423, L&T shed 2.59% at Rs1,482 and Dr Reddy�s declined 2.55% at Rs660. Reliance Energy, Wipro, Tata Motors, Satyam Computers, SBI, Reliance Industries, Infosys, Ranbaxy, Bajaj Auto and Bharti Airtel also closed in negative territory. Bucking the weak trend, NTPC gained 2.68% at Rs140, Hero Honda advanced 2.53% at Rs690, Tata Steel added 1.50% Rs434 and HDFC gained 1.08% at Rs1,567. HDFC Bank and ONGC also closed in positive territory.

The market breadth was negative on the BSE. Of the 2,466 stocks traded, 1,308 stocks declined, 1,098 stocks advanced and 60 stocks ended unchanged. The BSE FMCG Index was the major loser among the sectoral indices and shed 1.64%. The BSE CG Index declined 1.47% and the BSE Auto Index was down 1.31%.

Over 6.35 crore Ideal Cellular shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.25 crore shares), Gujarat Ambuja (75.02 lakh shares) and Mudra Lifestyle (71.17 lakh shares).