Market slips on political uncertainties

The market rose more than 2% on expectations that the global credit problem and local political worries may get resolved very soon. The Sensex resumed with a gap of 209 points at 14,458 tracking positive global cues and rallied sharply to touch the day's high of 14,555. Cement stocks led the rally with banking and metal stocks. However, the market received a major hit in the afternoon as the central committee of CPI (M) announced the party politburo's opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal and authorised it to do whatever it can to block the deal. Quickly the Sensex entered in to the negative territory but recovered soon. The market remained choppy thereafter and zigzagged between positive and negative territory. The Sensex finally closed the session at 14,164, down 84 points, while the Nifty ended the session at 4,115, down 38 points.

The breadth of the market was weak. Of the 2,665 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,702 stocks declined, 905 stocks advanced and 58 stocks ended unchanged. Almost all of the sectoral indices ended weak while, the BSE FMCG index bucked the trend and closed in the green. The BSE Bankex index lost 2.21%, the BSE Oil & Gas index declined by 1.68% and the BSE PSU shed 1.47%.

Several heavyweights took a sharp tumble on selling pressure. Cipla shed 4.41% at Rs168, ONGC tumbled by 3.07% at Rs784, SBI dropped 2.94% at Rs1,415 and Reliance Energy declined by 2.59% at Rs706. Among the other major losers ICICI Bank slumped by 2.47% at Rs826, HDFC Bank lost 1.74% at Rs1,100, TCS slipped by 1.64% at Rs1,008, Reliance communication dipped 1.64% at Rs487 and Tata Steel shed 1.60% at Rs560. Select counters, however, ended in the green. ACC advanced by 2.02% at Rs972, Ambuja Cement added 1.72% at Rs133, ITC gained 1.45% at Rs161, Maruti Udyog moved up 1.36% at Rs777 and Satyam Computer gained 1.25% at Rs423.

Banking stocks declined on sharp selling pressure. Kotak Bank tumbled by 3.48% at Rs626, Centurion Bank of Punjab dropped 2.76% at Rs37, Fedral Bank shed 2.67% at Rs304 and Punjab National Bank lost 2.58% at Rs452.

Over 2.11 crore Nagarjuna Fertilisers shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Asian Granito (1.42 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (1.39 crore shares), IFCI (1.19 crore shares) and SEL Manufacturing (1.11 crore shares).

Value wise, SEL Manufacturing registered a turnover of Rs197 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs175 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs144 crore), Asian Granito (Rs133 crore) and SBI (Rs122 crore).