Sensex drops 338 points

The slide in the market continued vigorously for the second straight session, with the index erasing nearly 76 points gains made in the early trades and finally tumbling over 2% at close for the second straight session. The related Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) sectoral indices also bore the brunt and tanked over 2-5% each. However, the mood was extremely bullish in the first hour of the trading session. The Sensex taking a cue from the positive global indices resumed 64 points higher at 16,742 and added another 12 points to touch an intra-day high of 16,754. Exhibiting sharp volatility thereafter, the Sensex eased in late morning trades and continued moving southwards through the afternoon. Frantic selling towards the closing hours saw the index come close to slip below the 16,200 level and touch the day's low of 16,165. The Sensex finally ended with losses of 338 points at 16,339, whereas the Nifty dropped 87 points to close at 4,864.

The breadth of the market was weak with losers outpacing gainers. Of the 2,737 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,198 stocks declined, 497 stocks advanced and 42 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices were hammered. The BSE Realty index tanked by 5.43% followed by the BSE Bankex index (down 4.00%), the BSE FMCG index (down 2.57%), the BSE Oil & Gas index (down 2.46%) and the BSE Teck index (down 2.42%).

Among the major laggards, ICICI Bank tanked 5.16% at Rs971.60, ACC tumbled 5.11% at Rs746, DLF declined 5.11% at Rs678.15, Reliance Communications plunged 4.96% at Rs514.55, Cipla dropped 4.61% at Rs201.90, ITC crumbled 4.22% at Rs184.85, Larsen & Toubro slumped 3.61% at Rs3,223.15 and Infosys fell by 3.54% at Rs1,419.90. RIL, Bharti Airtel, SBI, Bajaj Auto, HDFC Bank, ONGC, Satyam Computer, Hind Utilities, Wipro, BHEL and Ranbaxy dropped over 0.2% each. While Hindalco gained 5.27% at Rs199.90, Maruti Suzuki moved up 3.59% at Rs905.70, M&M soared 3.08% at Rs705.35 and HDFC advanced 2.54% at Rs2,636.65. REL, Tata Motors, TCS, Ambuja Cement, Tisco, Grasim Industries and NTPC ended with modest gains.

Over 1.96 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (1.43 crore shares), Essar Oil (1.33 crore shares), IFCI (1.11 crore shares) and Ispat Industries (1.08 crore shares).