Bears turn the game in 2nd half

The market lost its initial grip and succumbed to heavy losses on late selling in realty, metal, power and several major counters. Riding on the back of three

straight sessions of gains last week, the Sensex opened firm at 15691 and rallied sharply by mid-morning to touch an intra-day high of 15923. While the market maintained its upward bias for the better part of the day, the shift from the bullish mood came towards the close and the index plunged deep into the red to touch the day's low of 15475. The Sensex finally ended the session with losses of 115 points at 15551 while the Nifty declined by 37 points to close at 4625.
The market breath that was strongly positive in morning turned negative at the close. At closing bell 58% shares were down, while 40% were up. Remaining 2% scrips were unchanged. Of the 13 sectoral indices only BSE Auto was perceptibly up, BSE IT and BSE TECk were marginally up, while the rest 10 indices were down for the day. BSE Realty was down the most—3.07% while BSE Auto was tangibly up—2.45% higher.

Several heavyweights that were up in the first half took a sharp tumble on late selling pressure. Of the 30 shares that make the Sensex, 23 were down while 7 were up. ACC slipped 3.62% to Rs779.45, Sterlite Industries tumbled 2.88% to Rs655.85, HDFC dropped 2.49% to Rs2,412.95, Bharat Heavy Electricals fell 2.31% to Rs2,261.20, JP Associates slumped 2.25% to Rs222.05, ONGC lost 1.98% to Rs1,161.75, Hindalco Industries slipped 1.94% to Rs103.80, Reliance Infrastructure dipped 1.93% to Rs1,123.90 and DLF shed 1.77% to trade at Rs416.70. Tata Steel, HDFC Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra and National Thermal Power Corporation were down over 1% each. However of the seven Sensex stocks that rose for the day Maruti Suzuki India and Tata Motors advanced 5-7% each to quote at Rs1,545.95 and Rs517.85 respectively while Hero Honda Motors, Wipro and Reliance Communications added 1% each to their stock value.

NHPC made its debut on the BSE at its offer price at Rs36 and touched the day's high of Rs39.75. The stock finally closed at Rs36.70, a little above its listing price on volume of over 19 crore shares on the BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (2.91 crore shares), Mahindra Satyam (2.55 crore shares), Unitech (2.39 crore shares) and Ispat Industries (1.67 crore shares).

SAIL registered a turnover of Rs207 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs130 crore), Wipro (Rs114 crore), Tata Steel (Rs96 crore) and Mahindra & Mahindra (Rs88 crore).