Sensex scales new peak but closes below 17,500

The market witnessed another day of heavy selling, and the indices fell around 2% each at the close in a choppy trading session. Rising political instability, a flat open in European markets and a slide in Asain indices urged bears to strike back after the flat close of Friday. Taking cues from positive Asian indices, the Sensex opened on a firm note and rallied sharply to touch an all-time high of 17,983. However, the market steadily kept losing the momentum thereafter, and a widespread selling in the afternoon nearly dragged the index below 17,350 to the day's low of 17,322, a drop of 661 points from its intra-day high of all times. The Sensex managed to erase the loss of 169 points towards the close and ended the session at 17,491, down 282 points. The Nifty declined by 1.94% and was down 101 points to close at 5,085.

The market breadth was extremely negative, with losers outnumbering gainers by 4.81:1. Of the 2,783 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) 2,263 stocks declined, 474 stocks advanced and 46 stocks ended unchanged. Except the BSE IT Index all the sectoral indices came under sharp hammering and shed over 1-3% each. Among the heavy losers, the BSE PSU Index, the BSE Metal Index and the BSE Realty Index dropped over 3.50% each.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 23 ended weak, while 7 managed to close with the gains. Index heavyweight Tata Steel declined by 5.27% at Rs789, ACC plunged 5.23% at Rs1,115, Ranbaxy dipped 4.82% at Rs412, Reliance Energy plummeted 4.67% at Rs1,380, NTPC slumped 4.57% at Rs205, Hindalco lost 4.52% at Rs162, SBI tumbled by 4.33% at Rs1,783, Dr Reddy's Lab fell by 3.73% at Rs629, M&M 3.51% at Rs725 and Grasim slipped by 3.50% at Rs3,420. However, Satyam Computer, Wipro and BHEL gained over 1-2%, while TCS, Infosys, HDFC Bank and HDFC closed with moderate gains.

Over 3.12 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Power Grid Corporation (2.80 crore shares), Ispat Industries (2.75 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (2.24 crore shares) and Tata Teleservices (1.81 crore shares).

Welspun Gujarat was the most widely traded counter and registered a turnover of Rs355 crore followed by Reliance Energy (Rs339 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs279 crore), Power Grid Corporation (Rs274 crore) and IFCI (Rs247 crore).