Late buying trims losses

The Sensex bucked the major downtrend across the Asian markets and trimmed 580 points of losses on late buying in heavyweights. The market was once again hit by a substantial selling pressure and both Sensex and Nifty tumbled by above 8% amid a choppy trading session. Taking cue from weak global markets, Sensex opened on a negative note at 11,316 and fell sharply to touch an intra-day low of 10,741. While the market witnessed a fluctuating trend for a while, the afternoon trades saw sudden buying interest in frontline stocks and Sensex chopped off most of its losses to close at 11,328, down 367 points or 3.14%. Nifty, too, bounced back sharply and closed at 3,514, down 93 points.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,652 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,165 stocks declined whereas only 441 stocks advanced. Fourty six stocks ended unchanged. All the 13 sectoral indices were largely weak. The BSE CD index lost 6.75%, BSE FMCG index declined by 5.18% and BSE IT shed 4.90%. The remaining indices lost 1-4%.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 24 ended in the red. Among the major losers JP Associates tanked by 9.91% at Rs90.95, Wipro tumbled by 7.91% at Rs282.35, Sterlite Industries declined by 6.85% at Rs292.55, ICICI Bank plunged by 6.53% at Rs453.50, State Bank of India dropped 6.10% at Rs1322.15, Tata Steel crumbled by 5.36% at Rs338.20, Satyam Computer Services slumped 5.14% at Rs264.70, ITC fell by 5.13% at Rs165.60 and Tata Consultancy Services declined by 5.07% at Rs546.60. However, Ranbaxy Laboratories advanced 9.08% at Rs279.25, Tata Power jumped 4.79% at Rs804.60, Mahindra & Mahindra surged 2.75% at Rs486 and DLF gained 1.95% at Rs308.80, while Reliance Communications closed with marginal gains.

Over 2.23 crore JP Associates shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (1.25 crore shares), GVK Power and Infrastructure (1.22 crore shares), Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals (0.78 crore shares) and IFCI (0.70 crore shares).

Reliance Industries was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs434 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs287 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs251 crore), JP Associates (Rs209 crore) and the State Bank of India (Rs152 crore).