Battered market

The correction continued for the second consecutive day on weak global indices and rising crude prices. Dwindling foreign fund inflows into the domestic market in the past few sessions also adversely affected the sentiment. After shedding around 200 points by mid-morning, the market remained in the negative territory, however in afternoon it came close to erasing its losses. But, the mood turned extremely bearish, as widespread selling in IT, realty, banking and teck stocks dragged the index below the 13,600 mark to an intra-day low of 13,543. The Sensex finally managed to pare some of its losses and close at 13,995, down 425 points. The broad-based Nifty closed at 4,127, down 96 points.

The breadth of the market was extremely negative. Of the 2,650 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,808 stocks declined, whereas only 772 stocks advanced. The remaining 70 stocks remained unchanged. All the sectoral indices on the BSE were hammered. The BSE IT was the worst hit and tanked 5.07% at 3,455 followed by the BSE Realty index (down 4.68% at 3,903.82), the BSE Bankex (down 4.19% at 6,804.42) and the BSE Teck index (down 3.54% at 2,763.73).

Barring ACC and Tata Power, all other Sensex stocks bore the brunt of heavy selling. Ranbaxy Laboratories led the slump and crashed 11.05% at Rs308.85. Among other major laggards, DLF tumbled 6.25% at Rs394.60, Satyam Computer Services dropped 5.98% at Rs331.65, Tata Consultancy Services slumped 5.91% at Rs720.75, Wipro fell 5.77% at Rs390.45 and HDFC declined 5.53% at Rs2,198.05. ICICI Bank lost 5.48% at Rs599.70, Infosys Technologies was down by 5.19% at Rs1543.35 and Tata Motors shed 5.03% at Rs394.05. The other major front-line stocks shed 1-4% each. However, ACC rose marginally at Rs626.20 up 0.27% and Tata Power rose 0.16% at Rs1,022.30.

IT stocks lost significantly on relentless selling. Rolta India dropped 9.61% at Rs260.40, Moser Baer India shed 8.46% at Rs122.25, NIIT tumbled 5.21% at Rs58.25 and Tech Mahindra declined 3.11% at Rs636.20. Aptech, Oracle, Mphasis and Patni Computer shed 2% each.

Over 1.86 crore Sesa Goa shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (1.67 crore shares), Apollo Tyre (0.74 crore shares), IFCI (0.67 crore shares) and Cals Refineries (0.62 crore shares).

Value-wise, Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs395 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Capital (Rs277 crore) and Sesa Goa (Rs239 crore).