Sensex slips amid substantial volatility

Taking cue from the last three day’s gain of around 1,300 points, the Sensex opened on a weak note at 18,794, 19 point down from the previous close of 18,844. While the market witnessed a fluctuating trend for a while, the afternoon trades saw the index tumble below the 18,500 mark to touch the day's low of 18,336 amid relentless selling pressure. The Sensex finally ended the day with loss of 395 points at 18,419, while the Nifty declined by 96 points to close at 5,428.

The market breadth was extremely weak as the losers outpaced the gainers. Of the 2,801 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,693 stocks declined, 1,052 stocks advanced and 56 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices slipped sharply. The BSE Realty index dropped 3.29% followed by the BSE CG index (down 2.77%), the BSE Bankex index (down 2.72%), the BSE Teck index (down 2.02%), the BSE FMCG (down 1.91%) and the BSE IT index (down 1.66%).

Most of the index heavyweights witnessed heavy correction. Among the Bankex majors, SBI tumbled by 4.23% at Rs1,862, BOB dropped 3.47% at Rs310, ICICI Bank moved down by 3.37% at Rs1,092, and Indian Overseas Bank lost 3.29% at Rs132. Among the other major losers, L&T slumped by 3.61% at Rs3,360, Tata Motors slipped by 3.41% at Rs802, BHEL shed 3.30% at Rs2,341 and Cipla lost 3.30% at Rs185. Reliance Communication fell by 3.14% at Rs718, Bajaj Auto crumbled by 2.96% at Rs2,542 and Bharti dipped 2.45% at Rs1,069. The other front-line stocks lost between 2-3% each. Select counters, however, bucked the downtrend and ended with gains. REL advanced by 2.41% at Rs1,636 and ONGC moved up by 2.36% at Rs1,091, while MNM and Hindalco ended with modest gains.

Realty stocks were hit hard and dropped sharply. DLF crumbled by 5.76% at Rs865, HDFC lost 4.73% at Rs745, Parsvnath shed 4.39% at Rs374 and Ansal Infrastructure declined by 3.06% at Rs272. Phoenix Mill, Sobha Devlopers, IndiaBulls Realty and Akruti Nirman were down over 2% each.

Over 2.65 crore Power Grid shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (2.21 crore shares), ISPAT(1.42 crore shares), Arvind Mills( 1.21 crore shares) and IDBI ( 56 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs906 crore followed by REL(Rs575 crore), RPL(Rs396 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs394 crore) and Power Grid(Rs306 crore).