Weak overseas markets led the market slump

Market continued to trade weak on the back of slump in the US markets. Asian markets, too, lost ground with Hang Seng, Kospi and Nikkie slipping into the red by over 2-3% each. Wall street suffered one of its biggest drop this year on worries about credit crisis and weakening dollar. The Sensex continued the weak trend as the market witnessed another round of selling with index heavyweights, metal, banking, and PSU stocks shaving off over 293 points during intra-day trades. As selling gained momentum the index shed over 373 points and slipped below 19,000 mark to touch the day's low of 18,917. The Sensex managed to trim losses towards the close, however the index finally ended the session by slipping over 231 points at 19,059. The Nifty shed 84 points to close at 5,699.

The market breadth was negative, with the losers outnumbering the gainers in a ratio of 1.51:1. Of the 2,789 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,633 stocks declined, 1,081 stocks advanced and 75 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices had a weak outing. The BSE Bankex index slipped sharply and dropped 2.51% followed by the BSE Realty index (down 2.07%), the BSE Metal index (down 1.83%), the BSE Teck index (down 1.51%), the BSE PSU index (down 1.48%) and the BSE Auto index (down 1.25%).

Out of the 30 Sensex stocks, 22 stocks closed in negative territory. Among the major losers ONGC slumped by 4.07% at Rs1,237, SBI plummeted by 3.65% at Rs2,185, HDFC Bank tumbled by 3.62% at Rs1,559, Reliance Communication shed 3.01% at Rs705, ICICI Bank crashed by 2.92% at Rs1,169, Tata Motors dropped 2.18% at Rs706 and Grasim declined by around 1.80% at Rs3,546. However, Hindalco jumped 7.95% at Rs204, ACC gained 2.83% at Rs1,057, Reliance energy added 1.75% at Rs1,851, HLL moved up 1.35% at Rs195 while, Ranbaxy, Ambuja Cement, L&T and Dr Reddy's Lab ended marginally higher.

Banking stocks came under the grip of sharp hammering. Allahabad Bank slipped by 2.48% at Rs225, Punjab National Bank slumped by 2.45% at Rs534, Bank of India dropped 2.43% at Rs363 and Axis Bank declined by 1.82% at Rs920.

Over 3.58 crore shares of Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (2.82 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (2.82 crore shares), IFCI (1.12 crore shares) and Nocil (82.27 lakh shares).

Valuewise, RNRL registered a turnover of Rs539 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs449 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs413 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs358 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs309 crore).