Market nosedives on late selling

The market witnessed heavy profit bookings towards the close triggering a major sell-off in heavyweights, power, and realty stocks. Asian markets fell sharply in early trades following the major selling on the Wall Street last night on concerns of more mortgage losses. The market however recovered in the afternoon as Asian indices rose, reversing the earlier declines, on the speculation that the US Federal Reserve will provide signs that the US economy is growing faster than estimates. All-round selling in the last hour of the trading sessions shaved off nearly 518 points from the day's high. However, a strong up move in the international markets helped the Sensex to pare some losses and end the session at 19,281, down 353 points. The Nifty shed 127 points to close at 5,781.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,866 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,555 stocks advanced, 1,270 stocks declined and 41 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE Power index tumbled 3.01% at 4,513 followed by the BSE PSU index (Down 2.95% at 10,231), the BSE Realty index (down 2.80% at 10,447) and the BSE Oil & Gas index (down 2.65% at 12,137).

Barring a few select counters, most of the heavyweights suffered heavy losses. Among the blue chips Hindalco tumbled 5.50% at Rs194, BHEL shed 4.65% at Rs2,654, DLF dropped 4.21% at Rs908, Maruti Suzuki lost 4.11% at Rs1,010, Grasim dipped 3.48% at Rs3,735, Infosys slumped up 3.41% at Rs1,564 and ONGC slipped 3.16% at Rs1,222. However, Tata Motors, Ambuja Cement, HLL, Bajaj Auto and ACC closed with marginal profits.

Over 4.23 crore Tata Teleservices shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Hindustan Futuristic Communications (2.85 crore shares), IFCI (2.34 crore shares), Ispat Industries (2.34 crore shares) and JP Hydro Power (1.64 crore shares). Reliance Petroleum clocked a turnover of Rs307 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs251 crore), IDFC (Rs240 crore), IFCI (Rs239 crore) and Tata Teleservices (Rs222 crore).