Market sheds amid sharp volatility

The market recorded its fourth straight loss as players resorted to heavy selling on lack of liquidity support from foreign institutional investors, which have been offloading equities sharply in the past few sessions. Positive Asian indices also failed to lift the sentiment, as the Sensex drifted into negative territory in late morning trades after gaining 157 points in early trades to touch the day's high of 16,506. The sentiment turned extremely bearish in noon trades as sustained selling in heavyweights, Bankex, consumer durables, PSU and realty stocks dragged the index below the 16,300 mark to an intra-day low of 16,238. The Sensex, which gyrated 268 points during intra-day trades, finally ended the session with losses of 73 points at 16,276, while the Nifty dropped 15 points to close at 4,860.

The market breadth was exceedingly negative. Of the 2,763 stocks traded on the BSE 1,754 stocks declined, 930 stocks advanced and 79 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, BSE Bankex index dropped 2.33% at 7,755 followed by BSE CD index (down 1.90% at 4,386), BSE PSU index (down 1.72% at 7,212), BSE Realty index (down 1.55% at 7,226) and BSE Oil & Gas index (down 1.04% at 10,708) etc.

Among the laggards, SBI slumped 4.19% at Rs1,473, HDFC tumbled 2.08% at Rs2,519.75, ICICI Bank plunged 1.71% at Rs812.55, ONGC declined 1.34% at Rs884.35, Reliance Industries dipped 1.25% at Rs2,493, HDFC Bank crumbled 1.20% at Rs1,331. Satyam Computer Services however bucked the downtrend and advanced 3.29% at Rs499, while Cipla gained 3.04% at Rs205.05. Wipro and ITC ended with steady gains.

Bankex stocks continued to reel under sustained selling pressure. Oriental Bank plummeted 5.69% at Rs183.20, Bank of India tumbled 4.90% at Rs304.50, Bank of Baroda dropped 4.80% at Rs261.75, Indian Overseas Bank shed 4.69% at Rs124.10 and UBI declined 3.93% at Rs124.10. Federal Bank, Andhra Bank, Axis Bank and PNB slumped over 2-3% each. Among consumer durable stocks Gitanjali Gems, Bluestar, Videocon industries, Lloyd Element, Rajesh Export and Titan Industries shed 1-3% each.

Over 1.66 crore Chambal fertiliser shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.45 crore shares), Aishwarya Teelcom (1.41 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.36 crore shares) and Nagarjuna Fertilisers (89 lakh shares).