Market back in bearish groove

The market was once again subject to strong volatile moves and swung nearly 218 points during the intra-day trades. Weakness in global markets triggered a major fall in the domestic market for the fourth day in a row as it opened on a bearish note at 14064, down 122 points. The rising crude oil prices also acted as a negative factor. Auto, FMCG and metal stocks bore the major brunt of selling and tanked around 1-2% in morning trades and the Sensex quickly touched the day's low of 14011, down 175 points from its previous close. But buying at lower levels in heavyweights, IT and oil stocks kept the Sensex moving northwards. The mood turned bullish as the lower than expected inflation numbers came in. The Sensex entered into positive territory, but remained range-bound for the latter part of the session with alternate bouts of buying and selling. However, the major blow came towards the close on selling in auto, consumer durables and metal stocks, and the Sensex shed 122 points to end the session at 14064. The Nifty closed at 4150, down 30 points.

The breadth of the market was extremely weak. Of the 2,494 stocks traded on the BSE 1,464 stocks declined, 956 stocks advanced and 74 stocks ended unchanged. With the exception of the BSE IT Index and the BSE Teck Index, all the other sectoral indices were down by around 1-2%. The BSE CD Index and the BSE Auto Index lost around 3% each while the BSE CG Index, the BSE FMCG Index and the BSE Metal Index declined by more than 1% each.

Selling was rampant in several index heavyweight stocks. Tata Steel at Rs587 and ACC at Rs769 slumped by over 4% each. Among the other major laggards, HDFC shed 3.63% at Rs1,754, Tata Motors plunged 3.50% at Rs654, Maruti Udyog crumbled by 3.16% at Rs737, ITC declined 2.81% at Rs151, Ranbaxy dropped 2.55% at Rs369, Hero Honda tumbled 2.37% at Rs681 and Dr Reddy's Lab fell by 2.30% at Rs632. Select counters, however, managed to buck the downtrend and ended in the green. Hindalco rose 2.97% at Rs158, Satyam Computers moved up by 2.95% at Rs495, TCS added 1.20% at Rs1,221, ONGC gained 1.18% at Rs865 and Wipro ended marginally higher at Rs548.

Consumer durable stocks lost ground on selling pressure. Titan Industries dropped 4.83% at Rs1,013, Rajesh Export slumped 4.14% at Rs521, Timex Watches declined 2.74% at Rs25, Videocon Industries lost 2.68% at Rs440, Blue Star fell by 1.58% at Rs231 and Samtel Color was down 1.47% at Rs17. However, a fall in rupee against the dollar helped the IT stocks to shrug off the bearish trend and end higher.

Over 1.19 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (79.32 lakh shares), GV Films (69.39 lakh shares), Tata Teleservices (56.39 lakh shares) and Rana Sugars (54.12 lakh shares).

Value-wise Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs187 crore followed by Nitin Fire Protections (Rs148 crore), Infosys (Rs113 crore), SBI (Rs112 crore) and Satyam (Rs106 crore).