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Friday, January 18, 2008

Another brutal day on Dalal Street


The market crashed by 3.50% in tune with other major global indices as concerns of recession in the US economy played on investor sentiment. After slipping by over 383 points in yesterday's trades, the Sensex resumed 121 points lower at 19,580 and tanked another 650 points to touch the day's low of 18,930 on relentless selling in oil, realty, metal, and banking stocks. The Sensex managed to recover 84 points in late trades, but still ended with losses of 687 points at 19,014. The Nifty shed 3.52% or 208 points to close at 5,705.

The market breadth was extremely negative, with the losers outnumbering the gainers in the ratio of 6.89:1. Of the 2,890 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 2,505 stocks declined, 362 stocks advanced and 23 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices were battered. Among the major losers the BSE Oil & Gas index lost 5.88%, the BSE Realty index dropped 5.81%, the BSE Bankex shed 5%, the BSE Metal index declined by 4.89% and the BSE PSU index fell 4.70%.

Excluding few, most of the Sensex stocks ended in the red. Among the major losers DLF plummeted by 7.37% at Rs1,006, Reliance Industries tanked by 6.57% at Rs2,800, NTPC dropped 6.30% at Rs240, ICICI Bank slumped 5.78% at Rs1,245, HDFC Bank crumbled by 4.33% at Rs1,576 and Reliance Energy shed 4.01% at Rs2,124. Reliance Communication at Rs702, L&T at Rs3,930, Tata Steel at Rs782, Tata Motors at Rs712, ONGC at Rs1,209, M&M at Rs728, Cipla at Rs202, Maruti Suzuki at Rs840 and Hindalco at Rs185 shed over 3% each. However, Ranbaxy surged 5.10% at Rs387, Grasim gained 1.03% at Rs3,341 and Ambuja Cement, ACC, Bharti Airtel and Satyam Computer closed with marginal gains.

Over 1.82 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Himachal Futuristic Communication (1.78 crore shares), Bella Steel (1.28 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.24 crore shares) and Reliance Petroleum (1 crore shares).

Reliance Industries was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs493 crore followed by HDFC (Rs414 crore), RNRL (Rs389 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs320 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs221 crore).