Market declines sharply in late trade; breadth weak

The market fell sharply as heavyweights faced selling pressure. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Energy and ICICI Bank slumped. All the sectoral indices on BSE were in red. Banking, FMCG and power stocks were worst hit in today's fall. 23 out of 30 stocks from the Sensex pack were in red. Asian markets, which opened before Indian markets, were mostly in the red. European markets, which opened after Indian markets, too, were in the red.

The slide on the bourses today is attributed to the liquidity drain from the secondary market as the large IPO of Reliance Power opened for subscription today, 15 January 2008. The IPO will close on 18 January 2008.

The IPO of Reliance Power was fully subscribed within minutes of the opening of the book-building offer today. As per latest data, the IPO was subscribed 9.39 times. The IPO received bids for 214.01 crore shares compared to issue size of 22.80 crore shares.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 514.20 points or 2.48% to 20213.85, as per provisional closing. Sensex hit a low of 20,203.63 at the fag end of the trade. At the day's low, Sensex declined 524.42 points. Sensex hit a high of 20,872.93 at the onset of the trading session. At the day's high, Sensex rose 144.88 points.

The broader CNX S&P Nifty was down 144.35 points or 2.33% to 6062.45, as per provisional closing.

The BSE Mid-Cap index fell 1.24% to 9,418.82. The BSE Small-Cap index fell 1.03% to 12,729.66.

The market breadth was weak. On BSE, 982 shares advanced as compared to 1875 that declined. 31 remained unchanged.

BSE clocked a turnover of Rs 8095 crore compared to Monday (14 January 2008)'s Rs 7246 crore.

India’s largest private sector firm by market capitalization and oil refiner Reliance Industries fell 1.69% to Rs 3126. The company on Monday, 14 January 2008, announced yet another gas discovery in block KG OSN-2001/1 in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin on the east coast of India.

India’s largest private sector bank by assets ICICI Bank fell 4.14% to Rs 1350.13.

India’s largest engineering & construction firm by revenue Larsen & Toubro fell 2.44% to Rs 4065.

Reliance Energy slumped 5.78% to Rs 2331, Bharti Airtel slipped 5.62% to Rs 856.30, NTPC fell 4.54% to Rs 272, Reliance Communications declined 3.87% to Rs 774 and ITC gave away 3.36% to Rs 216.95.

Maruti Suzuki rose 1.53% to Rs 868, Tata Steel moved up 1.32% to Rs 850, Tata Motors 0.39% to Rs 768 and HDFC Bank climbed 0.11% to Rs 1789.90.

In Europe, key indices in UK, France and Germany were down 0.30% to 1.08%.

Asian markets opened higher backed by the strong close in US markets overnight, but most of the indices declined as the day proceeded weighed down by export oriented shares as the dollar depreciated against local currencies. Key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and China were down 0.98% to 2.38%. However, Taiwan's Taiwan Weighted index was up 3.13%.

US stocks rallied smartly on Monday, 14 January 2008 following better-than-expected results from IBM. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 171.85 points, or 1.36%, to 12,778.15. The Standard & Poor's 500 index shot up 15.23 points, or 1.09%, to 1,416.25 and the Nasdaq Composite index advanced 38.36 points, or 1.57%, to 2,478.30.