Sensex overcomes early blues, down only 170 points

The market witnessed a solid correction on the back of a meltdown in the major global indices coupled with the paring of foreign funds’ exposure in domestic markets. The Sensex began the trading session 267 points lower at 18641 and shed another 308 points to slip below the 18350 mark and touch the day's low of 18333. The market witnessed a dramatic turnaround in the afternoon as substantial buying at lower levels helped the index scale above 18800. However, heavy selling in information technology, oil and auto stocks kept the index in negative territory. The Sensex finally closed the session with a loss of 170 points at 18737 while the Nifty shed 46 points to close at 5617.

The market breadth was weak. Of the 2,769 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,699 stocks declined, 1,015 stocks advanced and 54 stocks ended unchanged. Except a few most of the sectoral indices finished in the red. The BSE Realty Index was the major loser and dropped 3.08% followed by the BSE IT Index (down 2.78%), the BSE Teck Index (down 2.71%) and the BSE Oil & Gas Index (down 2.28%). However, the BSE FMCG Index bucked the trend and gained 2.50% while the BSE Power Index and the BSE PSU Index closed with moderate gains.

Most of the Sensex stocks witnessed selling pressure and fell by over 1-4%. ONGC led the losers’ pack and crumbled by 4.78% at Rs1,180. Among the other major losers Bharti Airtel plummeted by 4.29% at Rs833, HDFC Bank dropped 4.08% at Rs1,476, Infosys tumbled by 3.60% at Rs1,642, Satyam Computer shed 6.99% at Rs658, ITC declined by 5.44% at Rs146, Maruti slumped 6.56% at Rs702, Reliance Industries fell by 4.88% at Rs859 and Wipro dipped 3.24% at Rs413. However, ITC jumped 5.30% at Rs178, NTPC surged 5.03% at Rs254, SBI gained 3.455 at Rs2,237 and HLL moved up by 2.85% at Rs199.

Over 4.38 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (2.19 crore shares), Essar Oil (1.57 crore shares), Mangalore Refineries (1.27 crore shares) and Reliance Petroleum (1.11 crore shares).

Value-wise Reliance Natural Resources registered a turnover of Rs316 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs283 crore), Bharti Airtel (Rs253 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs240 crore) and Reliance Energy (Rs222 crore)