Market sinks on bear hammering

The market went into a complete tailspin, as the much-awaited correction shaved nearly 700 points off the Sensex during the intra-day trades. Positive global cues like oil prices cooling off further failed to lift the sentiment, as investors instead tracked the falling Asian indices since early trades.After resuming on a positive note at 15,168, the market turned negative and remained under the bear hug for the rest of the session. The Sensex nearly slipped below 14,600 towards the noon trades as a wave of selling in heavyweights, oil, realty and metal stocks saw it slump to an intra-day low of 14,519. The Sensex finally ended 3.42% or 517 points lower at 14,571, while the Nifty crashed 157 points to close at 4,347. Among the Asian indices, Nikkei tanked 1.33% (down 188 points) at 13,942 and Hang Seng dropped 0.23% (down 52 points) at 22,745.

The market breadth was extremely negative, Of the 2,708 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,247 stocks declined, 450 stocks advanced and 43 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices took sharp beatings. BSE Realty index bore the major brunt and crashed 5.03% at 9,420 while BSE Metal index, BSE Teck index, BSE Bankex index and BSE FMCG index dropped over 2-4% each.

Except ONGC, all other 29 stocks in the Sensex pack ended in the red. Among the major losers Reliance Communications tumbled 6.65% at Rs489, Reliance Industries slumped 6.61% at Rs2,079, Hindalco crumbled 6.37% at Rs158.70, Jaiprakash Associates plunged 6.03% at Rs165.15, Reliance Infrastructure dropped 4.92% at Rs943.65, Bharti Airtel declined 4.76% at Rs754, Ambuja Cement dropped 4.71% at Rs84.05, Tata Steel tumbled 4.66% at Rs772, DLF lost 4.57% at Rs452.50 and SBI fell 4.11% at Rs1,241.05. Other stocks also dropped over 2-3% each.

Over 1.32 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.27 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.15 crore shares), Chambal Fertilisers (1.07 crore shares) and Ispat Industries (0.98 crore shares).