Sensex slips on subprime woes

A late bout of selling pressure saw the market slip from higher levels and end in the red. After posting a gain of more than 200 points in the first half, the market steadily declined from its early highs and wilted under selling pressure at close.

The market, however, was extremely buoyant in early trades as the Sensex after opening 100 points above its last close at 15,614 surpassed 15,800 to touch an intra-day high at 15,825. While selective selling pared the gains by mid-noon trades, the Sensex eventually slipped below in late noon trades on extended correction and touched the day's low at 15,568. The Sensex finally ended with a small loss of 10 points at 15,604, while the Nifty virtually ended flat at 4,518.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,761 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,743 stocks declined, 963 stocks advanced and 55 stocks ended unchanged. The sectoral indices displayed mixed trend on the BSE.

Dragging the market from higher levels NTPC tumbled 3.26% at Rs186. Maruti Udyog dropped 2.95% at Rs866, ACC shed 1.94% at Rs1,106, Cipla moved down 1.71% at Rs172 and Bajaj Auto lost 1.65% at Rs2,376. Wipro, Hind Utilities, Reliance Communication, SBI, Grasim, and Mahindra were down around 1% each. ICICI Bank, however, bucked the downtrend and advanced 2.64% at Rs899, HDFC Bank gained 1.33% at Rs1,228, Larsen & Turbo soared 0.90% at Rs2,592 and ITC gained 0.73% at Rs180 respectively.

Select PSU stocks witnessed selling pressure. Bongaingaon Refinery dropped 4.56% at Rs57.60, HMT lost 3.93% at Rs64.70, RCFL declined 3.38% at Rs52.85, BoI moved down by 3.32% at Rs241 and UBI was down 3.10% at Rs152.50.

Over 4.03 crore shares of Indo Wind traded on the BSE followed by IDFC (2.73 crore shares), ISPAT (24.06 crore shares), IFCI (1.45 lakh shares), IKF Techno (1.15 crore shares ) and Vishal Export (1.15 crore shares).