Subprime woes lead market slump

The market lost its initial grip and succumbed to heavy losses on selling in realty, power, and capital goods counters. Major US indices fell sharply on Wednesday on worries about the housing sector slump coupled with weak dollar and surging oil prices. Asian markets followed the suit in early trades and closed with loses around 1-2%. The Sensex resumed on a positive note despite mixed cues from the firm Asian markets. The market remained quite thereafter but profit booking in index pivotal stocks dragged the Sensex to negative territory by the afternoon and it touched the day's low of 18,183. The market seemed to close with heavy losses, but sustained buying in frontline stocks towards the close helped the Sensex pare most of its losses and end the session down 76 points at 18,526, while the Nifty shed 42 points at 5,519.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,816 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,965 stocks declined, 805 stocks advanced and 46 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices closed in the red. The BSE Realty index dropped 4.99% at 9,457 followed by the BSE CG index (down 2.53% at 18,815) and the BSE Power index (down 2.25% at 4,151).

Among the Sensex majors, DLF tumbled by 5.49% at Rs823, Reliance Energy dropped 5.18% at Rs1,605, NTPC lost 4.99% at Rs228, L&T slumped by 4.06% at Rs3,942, ONGC slipped by 3.61% at Rs1,150, HDFC shed 1.51% at Rs2,561, Ranbaxy lost 1.40% at Rs393, Reliance Communications fell by 1.20% at Rs674, Infosys crumbled by 1.05% at Rs1,532 and Tata Steel dipped marginally at Rs819. However, select counters saw some buying action and ended with gains. SBI advanced by 4.04% at Rs2,242 while ACC, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki, Hindalco, Cipla, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors and HDFC Bank slipped 1-2% each.

Over 2.46 crore Reliance Petroleum shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (2.16 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.73 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (1.63 crore shares) and IFCI (1.23 crore shares).

Reliance Petroleum registered a turnover of Rs504 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (Rs311 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs288 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs283 crore) and L&T (Rs238 crore).