Sensex plummets 615 points

The market witnessed the second crash today after witnessing a fall of 541 points on Friday. Following a steep fall in global stock markets led by fears of a credit crunch in the US, the Sensex resumed on a bearish note at 15,344, 207 points below its last close of 15,551. By mid-morning trades the Sensex shed over 500 points on across-the-board selling pressure. The market started to deteriorate further, towards the close, as fresh bout of selling saw the Sensex plummet over 600 points and touch the day's low of 14,911. Despite registering smart gains in the last session, the Sensex dropped 3.96% and was down 615 points for the day at 14,936. The Nifty shed 4.04% and was down 183 points at 4,346.

The market breadth was heavily tilted in favour of the losers as 2,109 stocks declined, 501 stocks advanced and 41 stocks remained unchanged on the BSE. All the sectoral indices were battered on the BSE. The BSE Realty index lost heavily and dropped 6.64% followed by the BSE Metal index (down 4.81%), the BSE CG index (down 4.69%), the BSE Oil & Gas index (down 4.40%), the BSE CD index (down 3.99%) and the BSE Bankex index (down 3.93%). The second-rung benchmark indices the BSE mid-cap index and the BSE small-cap index tanked over 3% each.

None of the 30 Sensex stocks managed to end in the green. Among the major losers ACC tanked by 9.05% at Rs964. Reliance Energy slumped by 7.08% at Rs737, Hindalco shed 6.44% at Rs159, Ranbaxy crumbled by 5.67% at Rs368. Reliance communication dropped 5.05% at Rs531, Tata Steel slipped by 5.04% at Rs622, Reliance plunged 4.98% at Rs1798 and M&M fell by 4.87% at Rs694. Other front-line stocks also declined by around 3-4% each.

Realty stocks took a heavy pounding. Housing Development & Infrastructure plunged by 10.01% at Rs516, Indiabulls Real Estate tumbled by 9.33% at Rs501, Parsvanath Developers lost 8.89% at Rs326, Peninsula Land by 8.89% at Rs326 and Unitech declined by 7.96% at Rs514. Sobha Developers, Ansal Infrstructures, Mahindra Gesco and DLF crashed around 4-5% each. Metal stocks, too, were hammered on the bourses. Shree Precoated Steels slumped by 9.62% at Rs334, Welspun Gujrat dropped 6.45% at Rs234 and Bhushan Steel fell by 6.23% at Rs659.

Over 1.35 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.08 crore shares), Everonn Systems (71.77 lakh shares), Industrial Investment Trust (54.47 lakh shares) and Bella Steel (54.04 lakh shares).

Value-wise Everonn Systems registered a turnover of Rs367 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs289 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs203 crore), SBI (Rs170 crore) and Reliance Communication (Rs161 crore).