Business   

Sensex plunges on heavy selling

Sheds 279 points; mid-cap counters suffer

MUMBAI: After opening with modest gains and keeping quiet through mid-day, it turned out to be a sellers' day at the bourses on Wednesday, with the Sensex plunging as much as 300 points in intra-day trade.

It settled at 14255.93, down 279.08 points from 14,535.01 points on Tuesday. The Sensex touched a low of 14234.07.

The plunge on Indian bourses mirrored the overnight weakness in the U.S., but was in sharp contrast to broadly positive trends in other Asian markets, including China.

After a sharp plunge in the last four days, the Chinese market recovered on Wednesday after indications that the government was seeking to soothe its sentiments, which had hit a low following a hike in the securities transaction tax last week.

However, on domestic bourses, huge selling was seen across the auto, banking, consumer goods, engineering, fast moving consumer goods, metal, pharmaceuticals and energy sectors.

While IT stocks managed to give the sharp correction a miss, modest selling was witnessed on these counters as well, said a broker.

The Nifty too plunged 86.40 points to 4198.25 after dipping to 4190.95. All the sectoral indices of the BSE closed in the red with losses ranging from 1.0-3.2 per cent, except for the IT index.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, as many as 26 closed in the negative territory, while Hindalco, Reliance Communications, Satyam and Grasim were the only four gainers.

The overall market breadth was also sharply negative with just 32 per cent or 841 of all the stocks listed at BSE managing to close in the positive territory, as against over 65 per cent (1707 stocks) ending with losses.

Huge selling was seen on the mid-cap and small-cap counters as well.

The BSE Midcap and Small-cap indices both recorded losses of about 1.3 per cent each, while the BSE 100, BSE 200 and BSE 500 indices were down nearly two per cent. — PTI

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Sensex plunges on heavy selling
Economy witnessing cyclical overheating: Rangarajan
Improving nuclear energy share
DoT asks telemarketers to register with operators
Honda launches Civic variant
Sangavi Foods signs buyback MoU on contract farming
Berger Paints ties up with Cartoon Network
Zylog Systems to establish two development centres
Sundara Rajan is Indian Bank CMD
Bhat takes over as CMD of IOB
Sharp drop in rupee
Exchange rates
Bullion rates
Committee on consent orders
Remuneration for bank auditors revised
UB makes open offer
GAIL chief to head Mahanagar Gas
`Green Day' initiative from US Technology
Centre's nod for PSL SEZ
J M Garg joins PNB as Executive Director
New Chairman for TMB

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu