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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Market ends on a bearish note


The market witnessed a dramatic turnaround in the afternoon as substantial selling at higher levels dragged the index below 19,650 mark and the Sensex fell over 220 points in the last hour of the trading session. The Sensex began the trading session above 105 points at 19,973, however it quickly slipped into the red tracking weak US and Asian markets. While the market languished in the negative territory, the index rolled back into the green in the afternoon and surged to an intra-day high of 20,026 on fresh buoyancy in the index pivotal stocks. However, profit bookings in heavyweights, banking, oil, and IT stocks saw the Sensex enter into negative territory again to touch the day's low of 19,644. The Sensex finally closed the session with a loss of 167 points at 19,701, while the Nifty slipped 23 points to close at 5,913.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,877 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 2,003 stocks advanced, 833 stocks declined and 41 stocks ended unchanged. Out of the 13 sectoral indices, seven indices ended higher while six indices eased on profit taking. The BSE FMCG index gained 1.79% and the BSE CG index moved up by 1.38%. However, the Oil & Gas index fell 1.97%, the BSE Bankex index slipped 1.58% and the BSE IT index slipped 0.76%.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 17 bore the brunt of heavy selling. Ambuja Cement led the slump and crashed by 3.89% at Rs131. Among the other major laggards DLF tumbled by 3.71% at Rs1,086, ICICI Bank dropped 3.46% at Rs1,322, Reliance Industries slumped 3.30% at Rs2,996, Ranbaxy fell 2.85% at Rs368, Reliance Energy declined by 2.38% at Rs2,213 and TCS lost 2.31% at Rs923. Other major front-line stocks shed 1-2% each. However, ITC rose 3.98% at Rs217, Grasim surged 3.05% at Rs3,360, Maruti Suzuki gained 2.76% at Rs867, L&T moved up 2.20% at Rs4,078 and Cipla added 1.83% at Rs209.

Over 4.60 crore Himachal Futuristic Communication shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (1.96 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.90 crore shares), Bellari Steel (1.56 crore shares) and Hindustan Motors (1.12 crore shares).

Valuewise, Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs472 crore on the BSE followed by RNRL (Rs431 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs316 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs210 crore) and Himachal Futuristic Communication (Rs202 crore).