Sensex cools, drops 329 points

The market took a sharp dip in early trades and the downward spell continued unabated for the day. Sensex began the session with a positive gap of just three points at 9637, however sudden spurt in selling, particularly in metal, realty, banking and capital goods stocks dragged the index just above 9,300 level to the day?s low of 9279. Sensex pared some losses on selective buying in fast moving consumer goods stocks and ended the session with a loss of 329 points at 9305. Nifty was 100 points down closing at 2849.

The market breadth was negative. Of 2,482 stocks traded on BSE, 1,598 stocks declined, 776 stocks advanced and 108 stocks ended unchanged. All the 13 sectoral indices ended lower. BSE Metal shed 4.75% followed by BSE Realty (down 4.58%) and BSE Bankex (down 4.58%).

Among Sensex stocks, JP Associates tumbled 7.88% at Rs69.55, Reliance Infrastructure plunged 6.35% at Rs533.15, ICICI Bank slumped 5.79% at Rs409.20, Reliance Communications dropped 5.78% at Rs171.15, Tata Steel shed 5.20% at Rs184.05, Reliance Industries lost 5.17% at Rs1319.05, Larsen & Toubro was down 4.96% at Rs666.30 and State Bank of India declined 4.86% at Rs1136.00. Other front-line stocks lost around 1-4% each. However, ITC was marginally up at Rs180.40.

Over 2.38 crore shares of Unitech changed hands on BSE followed by Satyam Computer Services (2.01 crore shares), Cals Refineries (1.45 crore shares), DLF (0.91 crore shares) and HDIL (0.83 crore shares).