ND: Indian market plunges; realty & metal worst hit
Tuesday, the Indian market plunged amid extensive profit booking, negative incremental flows from foreign funds and a lack of follow up buying by domestic financial institutions fearing more losses after the market rallied nearly 50% from its recent lows.
Weak global cues and apprehensions surrounding China's $586 billion stimulus package led to unwinding of momentum stocks. A steep fall in India's exports for the first time in five years during October also weighed on investor sentiment.
Unabated selling in index heavyweights all through the day pulled the key indexes sharply lower for the day. The market briefly recouped some of its losses in the afternoon only to give up the gains later. Midcap and smallcap stocks, however, were less affected than frontline stocks.
After opening lower at 10,405, the BSE Sensex fell to an intra-day low of 9,799 in the afternoon before recouping some of its losses to finish at 9,840, down 696 points or 6.61%. The broad-based BSE 500 index fell 5.68%, the small-cap index slipped 2.51% and the mid-cap index shed 3.41%. Meanwhile, the S&P CNX Nifty ended at 2,939, down 210 points or 6.66%.
On the BSE, the market breadth was extremely negative, with 1766 stocks declining compared to 759 stocks that gained. The realty index plunged 10.25% and the metal index plummeted 8.42%, while the power, capital good and oil/gas indexes slumped more than 7% each. All the other sector indexes also ended sharply lower.
Jaiprakash Associates (down 12.21%), Sterlite Industries (down 11.03%), Tata Steel (down 10.98%), Hindalco Industries (down 10.18%), DLF (down 10.15%), BHEL (down 9.65%), Satyam Computers (down 9.22%), ONGC (down 8.77%), Tata Motors (down 8.54%) and Wipro (down 8.03%) were some of the prominent losers.
Twenty-nine out of 30 Sensex stocks ended deep in the red, while ITC finished almost flat.
Reliance topped the traded value with a turnover of Rs 266.70 crore followed by Jaiprakash Associates (Rs 221.40 crore), Reliance Infrastructure (Rs 160 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs 154.40 crore) and Reliance Capital (Rs 130.50 crore).
