BackProfit booking drags Sensex down by 279 pts
Profit booking drags Sensex down by 279 pts
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By PTI
Mumbai: After opening with modest gains and keeping quiet through the mid-day, it turned out to be a sellers’ day at the bourses on 6 June 2007, with the benchmark index plunging as much as 300 points in intra-day trade.
The Bombay Stock Exchange’s 30-share barometer index, Sensex, settled at 14,255.93, down 279.08 points or 1.9% from the previous close of 14,535.01 points. It touched the day’s low of 14,234.07.
The plunge on Indian bourses mirrored the overnight weakness in the US, but was in sharp contrast to broadly positive trends in other Asian markets, including China.
After a sharp plunge in the last four days, Chinese market recovered on 6 June on indications that the government was seeking to soothe the sentiments, which had hit a low following a hike in the securities transaction tax last week.
China’ central bank deputy governor Wu Xiaoling was quoted as saying that investors should have confidence in the economy and market gains were inevitable.
However, on domestic bourses, huge selling was seen across the auto, banking, consumer goods, engineering, FMCG, pharma, metal and energy sectors. While IT stocks managed to give the sharp correction a miss, modest selling was seen on these counters as well, said a broker.
The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty too plunged 86.40 points, or 2.1%, to 4,198.25 after dipping to 4,190.95 points.
All the sectoral indices of the BSE closed in the red with losses ranging from 1-3.2%, except for the IT index that closed a marginal 0.25% down.
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.
At one point of time, late in afternoon trade, Hindalco was the only Sensex stock trading in the positive territory. It settled nearly 1.9% or ₹ 2.75 higher at ₹ 48.75, while gains were less than 1% for Reliance Communications, Satyam and Grasim.
The overall market breadth was also sharply negative with just 32% or 841 of all the stocks listed at BSE managing to close in the positive territory, as against over 65% (1,707 stocks) ending with losses, information available with the bourse shows.
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% each, while the BSE-100, BSE-200 and BSE-500 indices were down nearly 2%.
Among the Sensex blue chips, Tata Steel, HDFC, Tata Motors, SBI, Reliance Industries, ONGC, Reliance Energy, BHEL, Ranbaxy and ICICI Bank were the major losers, with each recording losses of more than 3%.
Besides, Maruti, HDFC Bank, NTPC and ITC also fell over 2%, while the loss was more than 1% for Gujarat Ambuja Cements, ACC, Bharti, Bajaj Auto, L&T and Cipla.
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