Market down volatility high

The Indian stock market was once again subject to strong volatile moves, swinging nearly 398 points during intra-day trades, as the June series is to expire this Thursday on June 25. Throughout the session the market zigzagged between negative and positive zones, making investors edgy. After starting the day slightly higher at 14591, the index dropped nearly 100 points in early trades before frantic buying by mid-morning trades helped the index erase all its losses and gain around 200 points to touch an intra-day high of 14668. However, the market failed to sustain the early optimism and drifted into negative territory in noon trades, with the index crashing the 14300 mark on hectic selling in oil & gas, metal, power and realty stocks. The Sensex finally dropped 196 points or 1.35% to close at 14270 while Nifty shed 79 points at 4235.





The market breadth was weak. Of the 2,675 stocks traded on the BSE 1,493 stocks declined, 1,114 stocks advanced and 68 stocks ended unchanged. With the exception of the BSE FMCG, BSE CG and BSE Bankex, all other sectoral indices were down by over 1-3% each. The BSE Oil & Gas, BSE Power, BSE Metal and BSE Realty lost over 2-3% each while BSE PSU, BSE CD and BSE Teck declined by more than 1% each.





Selling was rampant in several index heavyweight stocks. Tata Power at Rs1,107.40, Grasim Industries at Rs2,140.35, Reliance Infrastructure at Rs1,207.60, Reliance Industries at Rs1,952.45 and Hindalco Industries at Rs84.35 slumped by over 4% each. Among other major laggards, Mahindra & Mahindra shed 3.80% at Rs709.30, National Thermal Power Corporation plunged 3.58% at Rs191, Ranbaxy Laboratories crumbled 3.44% to Rs270.55, Tata Motors declined 3.39% to Rs333.60, Tata Consultancy Services dropped 2.91% to Rs369.75, Reliance Communications tumbled 2.85% to Rs296.45 and DLF fell by 2.27% to Rs323.05. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Tata Steel, State Bank of India, Bharti Airtel, ONGC, ACC and HDFC Bank shed around 1-2% each. Select counters however managed to buck the downtrend and ended in the green. ICICI Bank rose 1.84% at Rs729.90, ITC moved up by 1.55% at Rs202.80, Maruti Suzuki India added 1.45% at Rs1,062.45 and HDFC ended marginally higher at Rs2,294.70.




Over 3.39 crore shares of Cals Refineries changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (2.46 crore shares), Unitech (1.65 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.50 crore shares) and Suzlon Energy (1.38 crore shares).