Market slumps on weak global cues

The market continued to remain under the grip of a bear hug for the third straight session and crashed nearly 350 points during intra-day trades, as investors tracked weak international markets and rise in the global crude oil prices. Continuing from the yesterday's loss of 257 points, the Sensex resumed 180 points lower at 16,468 and lost more ground as trading progressed. The market witnessed a steep fall in early noon trades as selling in heavyweights, Bankex, capital good and metals dragged the index below the 16,300 mark to the day's low of 16,300. After lingering in the negative territory thereafter, the Sensex wrapped up the session at 16,349, down 301 points, while the Nifty shed 72 points to close at 4,875.

Market breadth was extremely weak. Of the 2,758 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,043 stocks declined while only 667 stocks advanced. The remaining 48 stocks ended unchanged. Except IT and Teck, all the sectoral indices finished in red. The BSE Bankex index was the major loser and declined 3.56% at 7,939 followed by the BSE CG index (down 2.72% at 12,834), the BSE Metal index (down 2.69% at 16,343) and the BSE PSU index (down 2.49% at 7,337).

Barring few select stocks, most frontline stocks faltered under the selling pressure. Among the major laggards JP Associates shed 5.58% at Rs224.40, Ambuja Cement dropped 5.38% at Rs96.65, BHEL slumped 5.21% at Rs1656, Reliance Communications declined 5.08% at Rs543.20, ICICI Bank fell 4.29% at Rs826.70, HDFC tumbled 3.92% at Rs2,573 and Maruti slipped by 3.83% at Rs759.85. Infosys, however, advanced 3.29% at Rs1,886 while Bharti Airtel, TCS and Satyam Computer ended with steady gains.

Among sectoral stocks, Bankex slipped sharply. Federal Bank tumbled 6.09% at Rs221.95, Kotak Bank lost 5.99% at Rs658.05, Indian Overseas Bank fell 4.75% at Rs130.20, Axis Bank declined 4.61% at Rs762.95 and Allahabad Bank shed 4.03% at Rs84.55. Capital goods stocks also bore the brunt and lost ground. Praj Industries, BHEL, Thermax, Bharat Electricals, Alstom, Punj Lloyd, Kirloskar Brothers, Elecon Eng, L&T and Lakshmi Machine crashed over 3-6% each.

Over 1.69 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.14 crore shares), Aishwarya Telecom (86.54 lakh shares), Spice Telecom (80.18 lakh shares) and RNRL (65.51 lakh shares).

Valuewise, Cairn India was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs180 crore followed by Reliance Industries (Rs148 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs145 crore), Bajaj Auto (Rs144 crore) and Reliance Power (Rs142 crore).