Market hammered amid oil woes

Stocks across-the-board witnessed another round of heavy correction, as sentiment remained bearish for the second session on crude oil worries (over $138 a barrel in the USA market), liquidity squeeze in the domestic market and sharp downfall in other Asian indices. The market had dropped around 200 points in last sessions. Major Asian indices like the Nikkei, the Kospi, the Jakarta and the Straits Times shed over 1-2% each, thereby adding pressure on the domestic indices. After resuming 456 points lower at 15,117, the market remained under the grip of sustained selling pressure. Extensive correction in heavyweights, realty, IT, capital goods (CG) and oil & gas stocks in noon trades dragged the index below the 14,900 mark to the day's low of 14,846. The Sensex finally ended the session at 15,066, down 506 points, while the Nifty shed 127 points to close at 4,501.

All the sectoral indices except the BSE health care (HC) index were hammered on the back of a relentless selling pressure. The BSE Realty index dropped 7.38% at 5,752, the BSE IT index lost 4.21% at 4,404.98, the BSE CG index shed 3.30% at 11,635, the BSE Oil & Gas index shed 3.29% at 9,676.55 and the BSE Bankex index fell 3.21% at 7,033.

The broader market was weak. Of the 2,693stocks traded on the BSE 2,170 stocks declined, 474 stocks advanced and 49 stocks ended unchanged. Among the 30 stocks in the Sensex basket only three stocks ended in green. Among the major losers, JP Associates tanked 8.65% at Rs181.35, DLF tumbled 7.39% at Rs475, ONGC declined 7.02% at Rs864.90, HDFC slumped 5.99% at Rs2,115, Reliance Infra fell 5.65% at Rs1,003.30, Wipro plunged 4.85% at Rs475, TCS dropped 4.58% at Rs891, Infosys slipped by 4.46% at Rs1,889.90 and HDFC Bank was down 4.34% at Rs1,162. Other frontline stocks were down by 1-4% each. Ranbaxy Laboratories however ended in positive with a gain of 3.87%, while Reliance Communications and Hindalco ended with steady gains.

On the volume front, India Cement witnessed more than 66.92 lakh shares changing hands, followed by Aftek Info (47.88 lakh shares), Polaris Lab (31.77 lakh shares), Reliance Communications (24.24 lakh shares) and Gujarat Ambuja Cements (22.05 lakh shares).