Market back in bearish groove

The market was once again subject to strong volatile moves and swung nearly 430 points during intra-day trades. Throughout the session the market zigzagged between the negative and positive zones, making investors nervous. After resuming slightly lower at 14231, the index gained 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 14406. However, the market failed to sustain the early optimism and drifted into negative territory in noon trades, with the index nearly crashing below the 14000 mark and touching an intra-day low of 13976 on hectic selling in bank, oil and technology stocks. The Sensex finally dropped 241 points or 1.69% to close at 14061 while the Nifty shed 48 points at 4270.

Although the market fell sharply, yet the breadth of the market was highly strong. Of the 2,735 stocks traded on the BSE 2,393 stocks advanced, 298 stocks declined and 44 stocks ended unchanged. With the exception of the BSE Bankex, BSE Oil Index, BSE Teck Index and BSE IT Index, all the other sectoral indices were up by over 1-9% each. The BSE CD Index and the BSE Metal Index gained over 5-9% each while the BSE Auto Index, the BSE PSU Index and the BSE HC Index advanced by more than 1-2% each.

Select counters, however, managed to buck the downtrend and ended with sharp gains. Tata Motors rose 19.12% to Rs363.90, Tata Steel moved up by 12.81% to Rs371.30, M&M added 8.18% to Rs678.65, Hindalco ended higher at Rs83.05 and JP Associated gained 5.29% to Rs173.30. Selling was rampant in several index heavyweight stocks. DLF at Rs354.80, ICICI Bank at Rs708.80 and Bharti Airtel at Rs859.25 slumped by over 6-7% each. BHEL, HDFC, Sun Pharma, Reliance, HDFC Bank, Reliance Communication, Infosys and ITC shed around 1-5% each.

Over 7.27 crore Cals Refinery shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Unitech (3.67 crore shares), RNRL (3.03 crore shares), Ispat (2.68 crore shares) and Kashyap (2.12 crore shares).