Bears strike back, drag Sensex below 14,000

The Sensex had witnessed a pullback yesterday and surged around 286 points on a strong buying support. However, the bears hit back strongly and triggered a major sell-off in the market during intra-day trades. Tracking the subdued Asian markets, the Sensex began the session marginally above its previous close but slipped on sustained selling in frontline stocks and continued moving southwards. After plunging below the 14,000 mark to touch the day's low of 13,942, the market moved in a range with a negative bias. The market witnessed panic selling towards the close and the Sensex ended the session with a loss of 438 points at 13,989 whereas the Nifty shed 134 points and closed at 4,075.

All the sectoral indices had a weak outing. The BSE Bankex index and the BSE Realty index dropped over 4% each, while the BSE PSU index, the BSE IT index, the BSE metal index and the BSE Teck index were down over 3% each.

The breadth of the mark was extremely negative, with the losers outpacing the buyers in the ratio of 4.54:1. Of the 2,767 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,236 stocks declined, 492 stocks advanced and 39 stocks ended unchanged. All the Sensex stocks ended in the red. SBI was a major loser and tumbled by 5.59% at Rs1,464. Wipro at Rs447, M&M at Rs612, ICICI Bank at Rs834, Reliance Communication at Rs484, Reliance Energy at Rs692 slumped over 4% each. Among the other major losers Tata Steel dropped 3.99% at Rs546, Hindalco lost 3.88% at Rs136, Cipla fell 3.75% at Rs177 and Infosys declined by 3.72% at Rs1,761.

Banking stocks lost ground on profit taking. Union Bank dropped 7.31% at Rs123, Kotak Bank slumped 6.87% at Rs639, Fedral Bank shed 6.01% at Rs304 and Bank of India slipped by 5.65% at Rs222. Andhra Bank, Allahabad Bank, Canara Bank and Yes Bank also ended weak.

Strong buying was evident in several small-cap stocks. Nagarjuna Fertilisers at Rs39.60 and Chambal Fertilisers at Rs49.65 hit the new high.

Over 3.13 crore Nagarjuna Fertiliser shares changed hands on the BSE followed by SEL Manufacturing Company (2.69 crore shares), Central Bank (2.43 crore shares), Ventura Textile (20.30 crore shares) and Bella Steel (1.98 crore shares).

Value wise, SEL Manufacturing Company clocked a turnover of Rs335 crore on the BSE followed by Central Bank (Rs305 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs189 crore), SBI (Rs121 crore) and Nagarjuna Fertilisers (Rs116 crore).