Market maimed amid sharp volatility

The market recorded its third straight loss as players resorted to heavy selling on lack of liquidity support from FIIs, which have been offloading equities sharply in the past few sessions. Positive international indices also failed to lift the sentiment, as the Sensex drifted into negative territory in late morning trades after gaining 162 points in early trades to touch the day's high of 17,689. The sentiment turned extremely bearish in noon trades as sustained selling in heavyweights, CD, metal, realty and bankex stocks dragged the index below to an intra-day low of 17,203. The Sensex, which gyrated 486 points during intra-day trades, finally ended the session with losses of 62 points at 17,465, while the Nifty dropped 13 points to close at 5,120.

The market breadth was exceedingly negative. Of the 2,807 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,245 stocks declined, 515 stocks advanced and 41 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE CD index dropped 3.20% at 4,737 followed by the BSE Metal index (down 2.67% at 15,115), the BSE Realty index (down 2.46% at 9,784), the BSE Bankex index (down 2.17% at 10,159) and the BSE CG index (down 1.62% at 15,859).

Out of 30 Sensex stocks, only 14 stocks managed to end in positive territory. Among the major laggards, HDFC slumped 4.47% at Rs2,796, ICICI Bank tumbled 3.49% at Rs1,066.70, DLF plunged 3.33% at Rs816.70, HDFC Bank declined 3.06% at Rs1,445.95, L&T dipped 2.84% at Rs3,527, Tisco crumbled 2.72% at Rs750.40, Bajaj Auto lost 2.70% at Rs2,217, M&M shed 2.08% at Rs644.95, Hindalco fell 1.71% at Rs160.50 and NTPC was down 1.50% at Rs203.30. Hind Utilities, however, bucked the downtrend and advanced 6.09% at Rs211.75, Infosys ended with steady gains at Rs1,551.35, Satyam moved up at Rs410, Wipro soared at Rs422.45, ITC, Ranbaxy, Bharti Airtel, TCS, SBI, ONGC, ACC and Maruti traded with decent gains.

Over 2.90 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (1.69 crore shares), Chambal Fertilisers (57.04 crore shares), Arvind Mills (43.65 lakh shares) and Ashok Leyland (42.26 lakh shares).