Sensex drops 120 points on weak international markets

After surging over 395 points in yesterday's trades, the market failed to rally further as weak Asian indices and the overnight fall in the US bourses weighed on the sentiment. Barring the realty and auto stocks, most of the sectors came under selling pressure. The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 119 points at 19,129 and did not recover through the day from the early slide. While the market moved in a range for the better part of the trading session, the index saw some profit bookings in the afternoon and touched the day's low of 19,019. However, the Sensex pared some losses on selective buying and ended the session with a loss of 120 points at 19,128, while the Nifty declined by 34 points to close at 5,698.

The market breadth was weak. Of the 2,843 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,478 stocks declined, 1,299 stocks advanced and 66 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Metal index dropped by 1.03%, while the BSE Bankex index, the BSE Power index and the BSE Teck index were down over 0.50% each. However, the BSE Realty index was up by 1.24%, the BSE Auto index added 0.99%, while the BSE IT and the BSE CG index gained marginally.

Heavyweights led the fall in the Sensex. Bharti Airtel slipped by 3.32% at Rs917, ICICI Bank slumped by 2.18% at Rs1,132, Reliance Energy shed 1.91% at Rs1,755, Maruti Suzuki lost 1.55% at Rs938, NTPC was down 1.53% at Rs235 and Hindalco tumbled by 1.52% at Rs191. ACC, Reliance Industries, ONGC and Ranbaxy declined by around 1% each. Among the gainers BHEL rose 2.60% at Rs2,673, Bajaj Auto jumped 2.54% at Rs2,653, SBI surged 1.38% at Rs2,273, TCS gained 1.20% at Rs997, Wipro moved up by 1.12% at Rs458, while Tata Motors, DLF, Ambuja Cement, Grasim and Satyam Computer ended with modest gains.

Over 2.12 crore Ashok Leyland shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Essar Oil (1.69 crore shares), Mundra Port (1.47 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.35 crore shares) and IFCI (1.35 crore shares).

Mundra Port was the most actively traded counter with a turnover of Rs1,457 crore on the BSE followed by Essar Oil (Rs361 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs242 crore), Jindal Steel (Rs185 crore) and Deccan Aviation (Rs143 crore).