It is raining lows!

The downward journey of the domestic stock market continued for the fifth straight session, as rate cuts by the seven central banks and cash injections by various governments failed to stem the fall in global indices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average-the benchmark index of the New York Stock Exchange- fell below 9,000 on Thursday, the first time since 2003. Asian markets and European markets were down 5–9%. The 30-stock Sensex of the BSE started the day on a bearish note at 10,632, around 696 points below its last close of 11,328. During mid-afternoon, the index accumulated losses of more than 1,050 points on across-the-board selling to touch the day's low of 10,240. The index however managed to erase its losses a bit and trade above 10,500 at the end of the session. After registering losses of 1,726 points in the last four sessions, the Sensex dropped 7.07% or 801 points to close at 10,529 today. The Nifty shed 234 points at 3,280.

All the 13 sectoral indices were mauled and each index declined by more than 4-11%. The BSE Realty was the major loser and crashed by 11.30% followed by BSE CD (down 10.11%), BSE Metal (down 9.25%), BSE CG (down 9.22%), BSE Power (down 8.80%) and BSE Bankex (down 7.84%). The BSE second-rung benchmark indices, the BSE mid-cap index and the BSE small-cap index tanked over 7-8% each.

The breadth of the market was heavily skewed in favour of losers. Of the 2,619 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,185 stocks declined whereas only 385 stocks advanced. Fourty nine stocks ended unchanged.

Except Ranbaxy Laboratories and State Bank of India, all the other 28 stocks in the Sensex basket ended lower. Among the major losers, Reliance Communications crashed 21.02% at Rs237.40, ICICI Bank plunged 19.71% at Rs364.10, Reliance Infrastructure slumped 19.26% at Rs515.30 and JP Associates crumbled 16.27% at Rs76.15. Tata Steel plummeted 14.99% at Rs287.50, Hindalco Industries dropped 11.18% at Rs80.65, HDFC shed 8.98% at Rs1719.20, DLF tanked 8.79% at Rs281.65, BHEL declined 8.28% at Rs1,345.85 and Larsen & Toubro lost 8.02% at Rs889.15. Other heavyweights also came under sustained selling pressure and lost around 5-7% each.

Realty stocks were battered the worst. Orbit Corporation tanked nearly 19.45% at Rs87.50, India Bulls Realestate plummeted 19.45% at Rs95.45, Mahindra Lifespace Developers slumped 17.49% at Rs211.55, Peninsula Land dropped 16.05% at Rs28.25, Anant Raj Industries lost 15.07% at Rs80 and Unitech slipped by 12.38% at Rs82.80. Akruti City, Omaxe, Parsvnath Developers and Phoenix Mills declined over 1-8% each.

Over 1.16 crore shares of ICICI Bank changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (0.94 crore shares), Apollo Tyres (0.85 crore shares), IFCI (0.85 crore shares) and JP Associates (0.83 crore shares).