Market back in bearish groove

Sensex tanks 2.49% from its high of 12180 on widespread selling in banking, metal and power stocks.
The market was once again subject to strong volatile moves and swung nearly 415 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 12093, frenetic buying by mid-morning trades helped the index to touch an intra-day high of 12180. However, the market failed to sustain early optimism and drifted into the negative territory in noon trades, with the index crashing below the 11800 mark on hectic selling in reality, metal, information technology, teck and power stocks. The Sensex finally dropped 241 points or 1.98% to close at 11876 while Nifty shed 63 points at 3621.

The market breadth was firm. Of the 2,623 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,266 stocks advanced whereas 1,266 stocks declined. Ninety one stocks ended unchanged. With the exception of the BSE CD Index, all other sectoral indices were down by over 1-3% each. The BSE Bankex Index and the BSE Metal Index and the BSE IT Index lost over 2-3% each, while the BSE Teck Index, the BSE Power Index, the BSE Realty Index and the BSE HC Index declined by more than 0.50-1% each.

Selling was rampant in several index heavyweight stocks. Wipro at Rs355, ICICI Bank at Rs520.60 and Reliance Infrastructure at Rs769.15 slumped by over 5-6% each. Among other major laggards, Sterlite Industries shed 4.93% at Rs491.95, Mahindra & Mahindra plunged 4.28% at Rs494.25, Reliance Communications crumbled by 4.11% at Rs229.60, Tata Steel declined 4.03% at Rs282.50, ACC dropped 3.55% at Rs602.55, Bharat Heavy Electricals tumbled 3.44% at Rs1647.55 and State Bank of India fell by 3.06% at Rs1325.15. HDFC Bank, Hindalco Industries, Infosys, DLF, Bharti Airtel, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki India and National Thermal Power Corporation shed around 1-2% each. Select counters however managed to buck the downtrend and ended in the green. JP Associates rose 2.53% at Rs142.10, Hindustan Unilever moved up by 0.98% at Rs232.90, Larsen & Toubro added 0.42% at Rs990.80 and Grasim Industries ended marginally higher at Rs1,775.20.

Over 6.62 crore shares of Cals Refineries changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (3.07 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.43 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (1.36 crore shares) and HDFC Bank (1.36 crore shares).