Sensex drops 83 points amid choppy trades

Despite Asian indices hitting new highs, the market seemed to have lost its steam after opening strong in the morning. The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 79 points at 14242 and touched the day's high of 14284 within a few minutes of trading on brisk buying in heavyweights. However, it shed its early gains on account of heavy selling in IT, pharma, auto and consumer durable stocks, and entered the negative territory by the afternoon. The Sensex swung between negative and positive thereafter, as investors turned cautious in view of the circular of the Central Board of Direct Taxes. The Sensex tumbled below the 14100 mark towards the close to touch the intra-day low of 14057 amid relentless selling pressure. The Sensex finally closed with losses of 83 points at 14080. The Nifty closed at 4147, down 24 points.

The market breadth was weak as the losers outpaced the gainers in a ratio of 1.27:1. Of the 2,597 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,413stocks declined, 1,123 stocks advanced and 61 stocks ended unchanged. Select sectoral indices slipped sharply. The BSE IT index dropped 1.10% followed by the BSE CD index (down 1.07%), the BSE Teck index (down 0.84%) and the BSE Auto index (down 0.77%).

Most of the index heavyweights witnessed correction. Among the Sensex majors Ranbaxy tumbled by 3.89% at Rs359, Hero Honda dropped 3.87% at Rs654, Tata Steel lost 1.86% at Rs489, HDFC Bank slumped by 1.66% at Rs1,090, TCS slipped by 1.51% at Rs1,167, Wipro shed 1.44% at Rs523, HDFC lost 1.43% at Rs1,759, Bajaj Auto fell by 1.42% at Rs2,079, Satyam crumbled by 1.23% at Rs477 and L&T dipped 1.06% at Rs1,927. The other front-line stocks lost around 1% each. However, select counters saw some buying action and ended with gains. ICICI Bank advanced by 1.08% at Rs918 while ONGC, Hindalco, ACC, ITC, Maruti Udyog and HLL ended with modest gains.

IT stocks were hit hard and dropped sharply. Geometric Software crumbled by 8.92% at Rs111, Info Edge lost 3.88% at Rs786, Igate Global shed 3.62% at Rs321, Mphasis declined by 3.05% at Rs307 and CMC was down 3.01% at Rs1,155.

Over 1.89 crore IKF Technologies shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Glory Polyfilms (1.56 crore shares), IFCI (1.54 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (76.88 lakh shares) and GV Films (57.36 lakh shares).

Time Technologies was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs217 crore followed by Nestle (Rs122 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs103 crore), Divi's Lab (Rs98 crore) and Glory Polyfilms (Rs96 crore).