Heavyweight, auto stocks drag market down

After the Sensex gained over 400 points on sustained all-round buying, the market was gloomy amid a range-bound trend during intra-day trades. After resuming 400 points down from the yesterday's close, the market continued to ease and slipped further in afternoon, as investors tracked weak Asian indices and remained concerned over foreign and domestic fund outflows from the market. Major corrections in Banking, consumer durables (CD), realty, metal and capital goods (CG) stocks saw the Sensex plunge deep into the red in late trades and slumped below the 14,800 mark to touch the intra-day low of 14,738, down over 6%. The Sensex finally closed the session with a loss of 951 points at 14,809, while the Nifty slipped 243 points to close at 4,503.

The market breadth was extremely weak. Of the 2,716 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,404 stocks declined, 282 stocks advanced and 30 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE CD index shed 9.69% at 3,638, while the BSE Bankex index declined 9.06% at 7,569.

Select heavyweights declined sharply on strong selling pressure. ICICI Bank tanked 13.76% at Rs757.40, Jaiprakash dropped 11.94% at Rs208.05, HDFC fell 11.07% at Rs2,225.55, Hindalco shed 9.20% at Rs164.85, REL lost 8.13% at Rs1,190.80, Tata Steel declined 7.93% at Rs658.50, DLF dipped 7.86% at Rs602.80 and L&T slumped by 7.03% at Rs2,703.50. Reliance Communications, Infosys, Grasim, Reliance Industies, Ranbaxy Laboratories and HDFC Bank shed over 5-6% each.

Select CD and CD stocks came under selling pressure. Rajesh Export slumped 15.58% at Rs79.65, Titan Industries declined 13.03% at Rs930.05, Lloyds element lost 11.37% at Rs97.80, Blue Star India fell 10.26% at Rs380.50, Gitanjali was down 7.89% at Rs233.35 and Videocon lost 7.46% at Rs279.30. In the Bankex segment, Yes Bank, Federal Bank, Allahabad Bank, Kotak Bank, Bank of India and Axis Bank were down by 7-14% each.

Over 2.26 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (1.37 crore shares), ISPAT Industries (1.11 crore shares), Essar Oil (0.56 crore shares) and IFCI (0.51 crore shares).