Market falls below 20K on profit bookings

Unabated selling towards the end of the session saw the Sensex lose 454 points from the day's high of 20,238. The market continued to witness volatility till the mid-morning trades. But, dipped by more than 200 points after the Reserve Bank of India announced the CRR hike by 50 basis points while keeping bank rate, repo rate and reverse repo rate unchanged. However, the clarity over the monetary policy led a recovery from the low levels and the Sensex entered into the green. Thereafter the market moved with in a range with a positive bias. However sustained selling towards the close saw the Sensex slump below 20,000 and end the session down 194 points at 19,784. The broad based Nifty slipped 37 points at 5,869.

The market breadth was weak as the losers outpaced the gainers. Of the 2,822 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,666 stocks declined, 1,087 stocks advanced and 69 stocks ended unchanged. Except a few, most of the sectoral indices closed in the red. The BSE Auto index dropped 3.12% followed by the BSE Oil & Gas index (down 1.14%), the BSE Bankex index (down 0.94%), the BSE FMCG index (down 0.68%). However, the BSE Realty index gained 2.36%, the BSE CG index added 0.80% and the BSE Metal index moved up by 0.65%.

Most of the index heavyweights witnessed heavy correction. Among auto majors Maruti Suzuki tumbled by 8.46% at Rs1,088, M&M dropped 7% at Rs741 and Tata motors lost 4.93% at Rs767. Among the other major losers SBI slumped by 2.63% at Rs2,062, HDFC slipped by 2.02% at Rs2,756, Reliance Industries shed 2.02% at Rs2,771, Grasim lost 1.98% at Rs3,730, Ranbaxy dipped 1.92% at Rs415. Select counters, however, bucked the downtrend and ended with gains. Reliance Energy advanced by 3.91% at Rs1,789, BHEL advanced 1.63% at Rs2,655 and L&T moved up by 1.06% at Rs4,323 while Bharti Airtel, NTPC, Ambuja Cement, Dr Reddy's Lab and Wipro ended with modest gains.

Over 3.98 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (3.26 crore shares), Tata Tele Services (3.25 crore shares), Power Grid Corporation (1.94 crore shares) and Manglore Refinery (1.67 crore shares).

Reliance Capital was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs828 crore followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs755 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs459 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs419 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs331 crore).