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.
