Bears strike back

The bears hit back strongly and triggered a major sell-off in the market during the intra-day trades. Tracking the subdued Asian markets, Sensex began the session below its previous close, but slipped on sustained selling in frontline stocks and continued moving down. After plunging below the 14,250 mark to touch the day's low of 14,211, the market moved in a range with a negative bias. The market witnessed panic selling towards the close and Sensex ended the session with a loss of 502 points at 14,275, whereas Nifty shed 122 points and closed at 4,312.

All the sectoral indices, except BSE FMCG and BSE HC, had a weak outing. The BSE Bankex and the BSE Oil & Gas index dropped over 5% each, while the BSE Realty index, the BSE CG index, the BSE Power index, the BSE Metal index and the BSE Auto index were down over 1-3% each.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,691 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,447 stocks declined, 1,161 stocks advanced and 83 stocks ended unchanged. Among Sensex stocks, ICICI Bank was the major loser and tumbled by 9.62% at Rs656.85. HDFC Bank at Rs1127.15, Reliance Industries at Rs2,147.35, HDFC at Rs2,221.55, Jaiprakash Associates at Rs163.45, ONGC at Rs983, Reliance Infra at Rs984.65 and BHEL at 1,654.90 slumped over 4-7% each. Among the other major losers, DLF dropped 3.24% at Rs590.75, L&T lost 3.16% at Rs2,625.60, Tata Motors fell 2.95% at Rs426.65 and Cipla declined by 2.65% at Rs225.60. While, Ranbaxy gained 3.12% at Rs481.25, ACC gained 2.41% at Rs574.25, Hindustan Unilever, Satyam Computer Services, NTPC, Grasim Industries and Reliance Capital gained around 0.50-2%.

Banking stocks lost ground on profit taking. Axis Bank dropped 6.44% at Rs712.50, Canara Bank slumped 4.06% at Rs183.15, Karnataka Bank shed 3.79% at Rs134.65 and Yes Bank slipped by 3.41% at Rs137.35. Kotak Bank, SBI, Federal Bank and Andhra Bank also ended weak.

Over 3.34 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (1.76 crore shares), MRPL (1.41 crore shares), Nagarjuna Fertiliser (1.39 crore shares) and Chambal Fertilisers (1.23 crore shares).