Down by ton

After taking a dip of 242 points in yesterday's trade, the market witnessed another round of strong bear hug that shaved 184 points off Sensex during intra-day trades. The market slipped into the red in initial trades and continued moving southward all through the session. Widespread correction in realty stocks sparked a major sell-off in noon trades that dragged the index below 9,550 mark to a low of 9,503. Sensex signed off the session with losses of 1.22% or 118 points at 9,569, while Nifty dropped 52 points to close at 2,917.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,509 stocks traded on the BSE 1,505 stocks declined, 911 stocks advanced and 93 stocks ended unchanged. Among sectoral indices, BSE Reality, BSE Auto and BSE Teck dropped over 2-4% each. Other sectoral indices were down around 1% each.

Except State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Ranbaxy Laboratories all the Sensex stocks witnessed steep falls. Tata Motors at Rs160, Wipro at Rs231.50, ACC at Rs463.20, Tata Consultancy Services at Rs473.65 and Mahindra & Mahindra at Rs279 slumped over 4-8% each. Among other major losers, Reliance Communications plunged 3.77% at Rs208, DLF dropped 3.26% at Rs292, ITC declined 2.92% at Rs172.60, Sterlite Industries lost 2.58% at Rs257, Bharti Airtel slipped by 2.55% at Rs693.10, Grasim Industries dipped 2.20% at Rs1190, Maruti Suzuki India tumbled 1.76% at Rs503.90 and JP Associates shed 1.66% at Rs77.20. Hindalco Industries, Tata Steel, Reliance Infrastructure, ONGC, Satyam Computer Services, HDFC and Larsen & Toubro were the other major losers.

Over 4.03 crore shares of Satyam Computer Services changed hands on the BSE followed by Unitech (3.28 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (1.44 crore shares), Cals Refineries (1.34 crore shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (1.11 crore shares