Sensex cools, drops 229 points

The market took a sharp dip in the early trades and continued to move down. The Sensex began the trading session with a negative gap of 170 points at 9160 and exhibited weakness through the day. The selling pressure in front-line stocks kept the metal and reality stocks in the red that dragged down the index to an intra-day low of 9034. The Sensex pared some losses on selective buying in power and PSU stocks and ended the session with losses of 229 points at 9101. The Nifty was 50 points down and closed at 2797.

The breadth of the market was negative. Of the 2,455 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,342 stocks declined, 1,018 stocks advanced and 95 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Metal Index shed 3.76% followed by the BSE Reality Index (down 3.31%) and the BSE Bankex (down 3.11%). On the other hand, the BSE Power Index was up 1.44%.

Among the Sensex stocks, Tata Steel tumbled 6.22% at Rs195.25, Bharti Airtel plunged 5.40% at Rs612, Reliance Communication slumped 4.76% at Rs176.15, JP Associate dropped 4.41% at Rs66.15, ICICI Bank shed 4.10% at Rs396.10, Reliance Communication lost 3.88% at Rs1182, Sterlite Industries was down 3.75% at Rs260.50 and Hindalco declined 3.65% at Rs48.90. The other front-line stocks lost around 1-3% each. However, NTPC was marginally up at Rs185.70, Reliance Infra gained 3.16% at Rs552 and Tata Power was up at Rs769.95.

Over 4.59 crore Satyam shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Cals Refinery (2.71 crore shares), Unitech (2.47 crore shares), GVK Power (1.15 crore shares) and Suzlon (98.36 lakh shares).