A big sell-off of stocks towards the end of trading hours on Monday pulled down the benchmark indices. The first trading session of this week seemed to mark a snap in the spell of the indices' upward trend that was witnessed during most of the trading days of last week.
The markets had started last week from an oversold position. The cues that investors had taken from the strong rise of key indices in the major Asian markets and the attraction of buying into the frontline cement and information technology stocks at low rates had proved to be key drivers of the indices' rise during the first trading session of last week.
Overall market trend
However, despite the fact that the global markets were stagnant and seemed to remain calm even though a few weak economic indicators from the US were expected, this Monday's session turned distinctly volatile during the second half at the two major bourses of the country.
Overall, the markets had closed marginally lower on the final trading session of last week, after a gain of over 6 per cent during the previous sessions. Opening this week on a negative note, profit-booking and squaring-off of positions on Monday led to a large fall in the indices.
The key indices - Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex and the National Stock Exchange's Nifty index had both opened in the black during the morning session on Monday.
After being range-bound, the indices seemed to slide down slowly into the red till mid-session, when a sudden bout of buying support pulled the indices back into the black.
However, the sharp rise in selling pressure led to the indices plummeting into the red within a short span of two hours. By the time the markets closed for the day, the NSE Nifty had fallen by over 41 points and the BSE Sensex had lost over 161 points. The fall had shaved off over 1 per cent from both the indices. There were only nine stocks from the Nifty's 50 and only four stocks from the Sensex 30 that were gainers at the close of Monday's trading session.
Sector Focus
Some of the biggest losers came from the information technology, auto, banking, capital goods and engineering sectors. The major gainers amongst Nifty stocks during Monday's session were MTNL, HPCL, Satyam Computers, Oriental Bank and ONGC. The top five losers from the Nifty were Tata Motors, HDFC Bank, Dabur, Wipro and Jet Airways.
At the BSE, the big losers from the Sensex were HDFC Bank, Tata Motors, TCS, Reliance Energy, Maruti Udyog, ICICI Bank, SBI, Reliance Industries, NTPC, L&T, Infosys Technologies, ITC, Cipla, Gujarat Ambuja Cements, Hindalco, Hero Honda, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, BHEL, Bajaj Auto, ACC and Bharti Airtel.
Sugar sector stocks were again in the limelight on Monday with at least a dozen of them recording gains. The prominent amongst them were Ponni Sugars (Erode), Dharani Sugars and Chemicals, Shree Renuka Sugars, Sakthi Sugars, Bajaj Hindusthan, Balrampur Chini Mills and Triveni Engineering & Industries.
Select pharma and banking stocks also managed to close the day with gains.