Sensex slips, correction continues

After an extended weekend for the domestic indices, the market that opened marginally lower, slipped sharply and ended the day with heavy loss of close to 500 points or over 3% on the back of heavy selling in realty heavyweights. The day started with overnight gains for the US and European markets, wherein the indices ended the day higher with gains of close to 1% each. While in today's trading, all the major Asian indices closed in red with losses in the range of 0.17-3.09%, except for Shanghai Composite that ended the day with gains of over 1.22% on the back of the better-than-expected expanding in the manufacturing activities (domestic PMI data). SGX Nifty that opened weak, ended the day with heavy loss of 173 points. The European indices that opened weak didn't lend support to the Sensex. The major European indices fell and slipped further, wherein FTSE 100 is trading slightly above important level of 5000, at 5001 with over 103 points losses, at the time of writing this report.

The Sensex, even today, continued its correction streak. It slid by over 627 points from its high of 15957, only to slide from that point and hit the low of 15330 in the closing hours of the trade. The Sensex opened gap down as expected at 15839 points, a measly 57 points lower to its previous close. In the early trades it remained volatile and managed to touch the green patch twice, however, with negative indicators from the global indices i.e. European and Asian, worsening the Sensex ended the day at 15405, losing 491 points or 3% in intra-day and closed below the significant psychological level of 15500. The market that traded marginally lower in the early trade on the back of weak global cues and heavy selling in the realty heavyweights shed heavily. Nifty lost 148 points to end the day at 4564 breaching an important level of 4600 on technical front. The market breadth was very negative as out of 2,761 stocks traded on the BSE only 534 stocks advanced, whereas 2,171 stocks declined. Fifty-six stocks closed unchanged.

Among the sectoral indices, every index closed in red today. BSE Realty lost the most sliding by 9.76% for the day, followed by BSE Metal that lost over 5.95%. Other indices ended the day lower in the range of 0.54% to 4.10%. On stocks’ front, Jet Airways jumped the most and surged by 7.00%, followed by Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL) that gained over 4.56%, while Marico and Bharat Electronics surged by over 3% each. Among the losers, Indiabulls Financial Services fell the most by 18.87%, followed by Indiabulls Real Estate that slid 16.15%, while Rolta India, Aban Offshore, Gujarat NRE Coke and Suzlon Energy fell by over 12% each.

On turnover front, Over 2.21 crore shares of Suzlon Energy changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (2.14 crore shares), Unitech (1.15 crore shares), Ispat Industries (0.87 crore shares) and Reliance Communications (0.70 crore shares).