Sensex crashes on global meltdown

Sub-prime mortgage sector woes triggering the heavy sell-off in US equities, suggesting a slowdown in the US economy and unwinding of the yen carry trades put pressure on Asian as well as domestic indices. The Sensex began the day deep in the red with a negative gap of 289 points at 12694 and remained range-bound with a negative bias throughout the session. The Sensex slipped further in the afternoon on unabated selling in banking, information technology and oil stocks to touch an intra-day low of 12504, down 479 points. The Sensex managed to pare some losses towards the close and ended the session with losses of 453 points or 3.49% at 12530. The Nifty shed 129 points and closed at 3641.

The breadth of the market was extremely negative. Of the 2,573 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,765 stocks declined, 748 stocks advanced and 60 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices came under sharp hammering and shed 2-4% each. Among the heavy losers, the BSE Bankex, the BSE Teck Index and the BSE IT Index dropped 3-4% each.

Except Bajaj Auto and Gujarat Ambuja Cement all the Sensex stocks closed weak. ICICI Bank plunged 5.43% at Rs830, Bharti Airtel slipped 4.72% at Rs729, Wipro dipped 4.58% at Rs555, Reliance Communications plummeted 4.36% at Rs398, Satyam Computers slumped 4.30% at Rs433, ITC lost 4.13% at Rs143, Infosys tumbled 4.11% at Rs2,019, BHEL fell 4.10% at Rs2,030, TCS shed 4.03% at Rs1,214 and Tata Motors was down 3.63% at Rs745. The other front-line stocks shed 2-3% each.

Banking stocks slipped sharply following weak global markets. Bank of India plunged 6% at Rs140, Oriental Bank shed 5.43% at Rs162, Allahabad Bank lost 3.69% at Rs72 and Indian Overseas Bank fell 3.53% at Rs94. UTI Bank, State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda and HDFC Bank were down 2-3% each.

Over 77.63 lakh Idea Cellular shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Parsvanath Developers (43.37 lakh shares), ITC (32.80 lakh shares), India Cements (27.85 lakh shares) and Gujarat Ambuja Cement (27.67 lakh shares).

Parsvanath Developers registered a turnover of Rs129 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs112 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs98 crore), ACC (Rs92 crore) and Infosys (Rs89 crore).