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Friday, May 23, 2008

Market takes a beating


The market witnessed a full-fledged correction, as weak Asian markets and flat US and European indices in yesterday's close dampened the sentiment. After easing sharply in the last few sessions of the week, profit taking was round the corner, as the Sensex had rallied sharply last week. Although the Sensex resumed on a positive note at 16,959, the market soon lost ground and slipped below 16,800 in early trades. The market steadily kept losing momentum as trading progressed and lost significantly in afternoon trades as selling in heavyweights, realty, FMCG, oil & gas and metal stocks dragged the index to the day's low of 1,626. The Sensex finally ended the session with losses of 257 points at 16,650, while the Nifty shed 77 points to close at 4,949.

The market breadth was extremely weak. Of the 2,790 stocks traded on the BSE 1,901 stocks declined, 816 stocks advanced and 73 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices ended in red except BSE HC index. BSE Realty index was the major loser and shed 2.38% at 7,510 followed by BSE FMCG index (down 2.15% at 2,387), BSE Oil & Gas index (down 2.15% at 10,975) and BSE Metal index (down 2.08% at 16,796).

Among the major losers ITC shed 4.24% at Rs213.60, Tata Motors declined 3.57% at Rs638, Jaiprakash Associates fell by 3.43% at Rs237.65, Larsen & Toubro slipped by 2.47% at Rs2,844.75, Reliance Energy dipped 2.42% at Rs1,291, ONGC lost 2.41% at Rs902.05 and Tata Consultancy Services slumped 2.40% at Rs933.70. While Hindalco, Reliance Communications, SBI, Ambuja Cement, ICICI Bank, ACC, Infosys, DLF, Maruti, Wipro, Satyam Computer and Tata Steel lost above 1-2% each. Bharti Airtel, however, gained 2.35% at Rs836.80 while HDFC, HUL, HDFC Bank and Cipla ended with steady gains.

Over 3.56 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.67 crore shares), Aishwarya Telecom (1.11 crore shares), Idea Cellular (0.92 crore shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (0.81 crore shares).