Market takes a beating; Sensex down 114 points

Sensex could not hold on to its gains despite positive global cues. The market saw a knee-jerk reaction in the opening trades to the interest rate cut of 25 basis points by the US Federal Reserve last night. The Nifty crossed the 6,000 mark for the first time, while the Sensex zoomed up by 366 points expecting higher capital inflows. The market moved within a range of 19,800-20,000 for the major portion of the day, but witnessed a major slump towards the close and touched an intra-day low of 19,634. The Sensex finally closed with a loss of 114 points at 19,724, while the Nifty was down 34 points at 5,866.

The breadth of the market was weak. Of the 2,815 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,817 stocks declined, 944 stocks advanced and 54 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral front, the BSE Bankex index was up 1.84% at 10,851, the BSE CG index gained 1.75% at 20,141 and the BSE PSU index moved up by 0.77% at 9,702. However BSE FMCG index, BSE Reality index, BSE Auto index and BSE CD index were down 2-4% each.

Among the major losers, Maruti Suzuki shed 6.51% at Rs1,004, HLL declined 6.43% at Rs194, Bharti Airtel fell 6.32% at Rs943, Reliance Energy slipped 5.30% at Rs1,768, Hindalco dipped 4.28% at Rs188, ITC lost 4.07% at Rs172 and Reliance Industries slumped 3.99% at Rs2,672. HDFC, ACC, Tata Steel, and Bajaj Auto were down over 2% each. ONGC, however, gained 6.60% at Rs1,330, followed by L&T up 4.29% at Rs4,227, ICICI Bank added 3.33% at Rs1,299, Reliance Communication jumped 2.42% at Rs791 and Ranbaxy was up by 2.06% at Rs436.

Over 7.23 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (5.72 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (2.09 crore shares), Power Grid Corporation (1.41 crore shares) and IFCI (1.31 crore shares).

Value-wise, Reliance Petroleum registered a turnover of Rs1,565 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (Rs967 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs522 crore), RIL (Rs408 crore), and L&T (Rs378 crore).