Losing streak extends

The market took a sharp dip in early trades and the downward spell continued unabated for the day. Sensex began the session with a negative gap of 129 points at 8763, however sudden spurt in selling, particularly in banking, metal, oil & gas and capital goods stocks dragged the index just above 8,600 level to the day’s low of 8564. However, the index pared some losses on selective buying in fast moving consumer durables (CD) stocks and ended the session with a loss of 285 points at 8607. Nifty was 89 points down at 2675 at closing.



The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,454 stocks traded on BSE, 1,633 stocks declined, whereas 734 stocks advanced. Eighty seven stocks ended unchanged. All the 13 sectoral indices except BSE CD ended lower. BSE Bankex shed 4.86% followed by BSE Metal (down 4.31%), BSE Oil, BSE CG, BSE Power, BSE PSU, BSE Teck, BSE FMCG, BSE Realty, BSE IT, BSE Auto and BSE HC were down 1-2% each.



Among Sensex stocks, Reliance Infrastructure tumbled 9.12% at Rs445.85, Tata Steel plunged 7.54% at Rs159.35, ICICI Bank slumped 7.28% at Rs304.20, Reliance Communications dropped 6.50% at Rs145.35, JP Associates shed 5% at Rs62.55, HDFC Bank lost 4.43% at Rs845.65, Larsen & Toubro was down 4.40% at Rs584.55 and Tata Consultancy Services declined 4.39% at Rs459.50 Other frontline stocks lost around 1-4% each. However, Mahindra & Mahindra was at Rs317.90, up 2.58%.


Over 3.40 crore shares of Edserv Softsystems changed hands on BSE followed by Cals Refineries (1.40 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (0.89 crore shares), Satyam Computer Services (0.77 crore shares) and Unitech (0.69 crore shares).