Market back in bearish groove

The market was once again subject to strong volatile moves and swung nearly 450 points during intra-day trades. Throughout the session the market zigzagged between negative and positive zones, making investors edgy. After starting the day slightly higher at 11358, the index dropped nearly 200 points in early trades before frenetic buying by mid-morning trades helped the index erase all its losses and gain around 100 points to touch an intra-day high of 11367. However, the market failed to sustain the early optimism and drifted into negative territory in noon trades, with the index crashing the 10900 mark on hectic selling in reality, metal, capital goods, power and oil stocks. The Sensex finally dropped 337 points or 2.99% to close at 10947 while Nifty shed 115 points at 3370.

The breadth of the market was weak. Of the 2,653 stocks traded on the BSE 1,742 stocks declined, 851 stocks advanced and 60 stocks ended unchanged. With the exception of the BSE FMCG Index, all the other sectoral indices were down by over 1-9% each. The BSE Realty Index and the BSE Metal Index lost over 6-9% each while the BSE CG Index, the BSE Oil Index and the BSE Power Index declined by more than 4% each.

Selling was rampant in several index heavyweight stocks. Tata Motors at Rs243.50, DLF at Rs227.50 and Reliance Infrastructure at Rs634 slumped by over 10-13% each. Among other major laggards, JP Associates shed 8.81% at Rs111.75, Tata Steel plunged 8.37% at Rs268.80, Hindalco Industries crumbled by 7.88% at Rs57.25, Reliance Communications declined 7.19% at Rs213.50, Ranbaxy Laboratories dropped 6.83% at Rs186.20, Larsen & Toubro tumbled 5.38% at Rs831 and Reliance Industries fell by 5.45% at Rs1726.10. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Sterlite Industries, Mahindra & Mahindra, ICICI Bank, Tata Power, Infosys Technologies, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd and State Bank of India shed around 2-5% each. Select counters however managed to buck the downtrend and ended in the green. ITC rose 3.21% at Rs191.55, Wipro moved up by 2.84% at Rs276.55, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries added 2.05% at Rs1236.25 and Hindustan Unilever ended marginally higher at Rs239.15.

Over 5.93 crore Unitech shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (3.06 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (2.87 crore shares), Karuturi Global (2.77 crore shares) and Cals Refineries (2.24 crore shares).