Market hammered amid oil woes

Stocks across-the-board witnessed another round of correction as sentiment remained bearish for the second straight session on crude oil worries (over $127 a barrel in the US market), liquidity squeeze in the domestic market and fall in other Asian indices. The market had dropped over 350 points yesterday. Major Asian indices like the Hang Seng, the Kospi, the Jakarta and the Straits Times shed over 1% each, thereby adding pressure on the domestic indices.

After resuming 211 points lower at 15,852, the market remained under the grip of sustained selling pressure. Extensive correction in heavyweights, power and capital goods stocks in noon trades dragged the index below the 15,750 mark to the day's low of 15,710. Towards the day’s close, market witnessed buying in oil & gas stocks which helped it to recover from the day’s low. Finally the Sensex ended the session at 15,963, down 101 points, while the Nifty shed 24 points to close at 4,716.

Except oil & gas, consumer durables (CD), auto and health care (HC) indices, all other sectoral indices were hammered on the back of relentless selling pressure. The BSE Power index dropped 2.64% at 2,754, the BSE CG index lost 2.24% at 12,521, the BSE Teck index shed 1.69% at 3,501.40 and the BSE IT index fell 1.49% at 4,580.

The market breadth was extremely weak. Of the 2,722 stocks traded on the BSE 1,818 stocks declined, 847 stocks advanced and 57 stocks ended unchanged. Among the major losers Bharti Airtel shed 4.14% at Rs841.35, Reliance Infra declined 3.87% at Rs1,125.15, Satyam Computer Services fell by 3.64% at Rs499.75, BHEL slipped by 2.95% at Rs1,548.50, HDFC Bank dipped 2.95% at Rs2,458.90, Jaiprakash Associates lost 5.45% at Rs206.45 and L&T slumped 2.30% at Rs2,849.10. ACC, however, gained 3.74% at Rs649.50 followed by Ranbaxy Laboratories that scaled up 3.09% at Rs529.95 while DLF, Wipro and Reliance Industries ended with steady gains.

Power stocks slipped sharply. Reliance Power tumbled nearly 4.29% at Rs218.80, Power Grid slumped 3.65% at Rs1,125.15, Suzlon Energy dropped 3.60% at Rs258.40, CESC declined 3.37% at Rs463.35, BHEL dipped 2.95% at Rs1,548.50, Tata Power fell 2.91% at Rs1,254.40 and ABB was down 2.65% at Rs998.50.

On the volume front, IFCI witnessed over 2.14 crore shares changing hands followed by Ispat Industries (1.44 crore shares), Aishwarya Telecom (1.11 crore shares), Chambal Fertilisers (98.27 lakh shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (96.15 lakh shares).

Valuewise, Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs279 crore followed by India Reliance Capital (Rs211 crore), Essar Oil (Rs165 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs155 crore) and IFCI (Rs128 crore).