Brutal sell off on Dalal street

The market received heavy pounding and slipped below 19K mark as intense selling backed by strong volatility saw the index shed around 766 points during intra-day trades. The market slipped into the red in the morning trades tracking weak Asian markets, but the main blow came towards the close as relentless selling in metal, capital goods, power, banking, and realty stocks dragged the index below the 19,000 mark to a low of 18,515. The Sensex fell more than 4% in late trades in line with other Asian markets on concerns about the US economy. The sentiment across Asia was hit after the US federal policy makers lowered their growth forecast in October and appeared worried about the credit-market losses. It has lowered the growth rate for the next year to 1.8% from 2.5% anticipated in June. The Sensex finally managed to recover some of its losses and closed the session at 18,603, down 3.52% with losses of 678 points. The Nifty, too, fell sharply and declined by 3.80% and was down 220 points to close at 5,561.

The breadth of the market was extremely negative, with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of around 3.31:1 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Of the 2,857 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,177 stocks declined, 656 stocks advanced and 24 stocks remained unchanged. All the sectoral indices on the BSE were hammered. The BSE Metal index was the worst hit and tanked 6.11% at 16,254 followed by the BSE PSU index (down 5.92% at 9,625), the BSE Power index (down 5.91% at 4,247) and the BSE CG index (down 5.14% at 19,303).

All the index stocks bore the brunt of heavy selling. NTPC led the slump and crashed by 8.03% at Rs240. Among the other major laggards BHEL tumbled by 6.33% at Rs2,486, ITC dropped 5.95% at Rs185, Maruti Suzuki slumped 5.85% at Rs951, Reliance Energy fell 5.65% at Rs1,693, ICICI Bank declined by 5.50% at Rs1,103 and SBI lost 5.48% at Rs2,155. Other major front-line stocks shed 2-4% each.

Metal stocks lost significantly on relentless selling. Ispat Industries dropped by 9.29% at Rs42, Jindal Steel shed 8.29% at Rs10,043, Gujrat NRE Coke tumbled by 8.16% at Rs117, Welspun Gujarat declined by 7.88% at Rs381, Shree Precoated slipped by 7.73% at Rs341 and Hindustan Zinc lost 7.71% at Rs731.

Over 2.22 crore Tata Teleservices shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (1.93 crore shares), IFCI (1.85 crore shares), RNRL (1.78 crore shares) and Bella Steel (1.54 crore shares).

Valuewise, Religare registered a turnover of Rs619 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs400 crore), RNRL (Rs278 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs270 crore) and Reliance Capital (Rs213 crore).