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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Sensex drops 5% amidst high drama


The market witnessed the biggest carnage today with the trading coming to a halt within minutes of the opening bell following a sharp drop of over 10% on both the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Last time the market was suspended from trading was on October 17, 2007. Against the backdrop of weak Asian indices and yesterday's crash of over 1,400 points, the Sensex witnessed a free-fall and plunged below the 15,500 level to touch an intra-day low of 15,332, down 2,273 points. Following the resumption of trading in mid-morning, the Sensex and the Nifty recovered substantially from their earlier losses. The Sensex and Nifty traded above the 16,500 mark and the 4,800 level respectively after the finance minister issued a statement that there was no problem with the fundamentals of the economy and banks would provide enough liquidity. Finally, the Sensex ended 4.97% lower or 875 points down at 16,730, whereas the Nifty was down 5.94% or 394 points at 4,899.

The market breadth was overwhelmingly weak, with losers outnumbering gainers by 15:1 on the BSE. Of the 2,454 stocks traded on the BSE 2,273 stocks declined, 152 stocks advanced and 29 stocks ended unchanged. All the BSE sectoral indices continued to trade weak and dropped around 3-10% each. The BSE Oil & Gas Index was the major loser and lost 10% while the BSE Realty Index shed 9%.

Majority of the 30-Sensex stocks ended in the red. Among the major losers ONGC shed 13.62% at Rs962, ITC plunged 9.54% at Rs184, Hindalco crumbled 9.37% at Rs150, M&M crashed 9.14% at Rs611, Ambuja Cement slipped by 8.57% at Rs116, Cipla tumbled 8.14% at Rs175, HDFC lost 8.10% at Rs2,480, Reliance Industries dropped 7.32% at Rs2,358, Tata Steel slumped 7.11% at Rs671 and HLL fell by 6.78% at Rs186. Select front-line counters rebounded from their intra-day lows and ended in the green. Bharti Airtel rose 2.54% at Rs849 while Tata Motors gained marginally at Rs658.

Over 3.74 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (3.08 crore shares), Ispat Industries (2.32 crore shares), IFCI (2.20 crore shares) and Tata Teleservices (1.44 crore shares).

Valuewise, Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs440 crore followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs413 crore), RNRL (Rs404 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs367 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs175 crore).