Markets plunge on weakness in metals, realty

The markets opened marginally in the red and flirted on either side on the dotted line throughout the morning session. However, volatility returned to haunt the Street in the post-lunch session. The Sensex closed around the lowest point of the day, at 15,404, weaker by 491 points, and the Nifty ended at 4545, down by 147 points, accompanied by a huge rise in volumes..

The Sensex dropped to its lowest level in more than two months and the Nifty closed below the 4,600 mark for the first time since September 3. The Sensex is down 12% from its recent Muhurat trading high of 17,493.

The markets have now extended their losses for the sixth consecutive trading day. Reliance Industries alone was responsible for a loss of 122 points on the Sensex. Infosys wiped 43 points off the index and SBI was responsible for a decline of 33 points.

Among the Sensex losers, Hindalco shed 10% at Rs 109, DLF weakened by 9% to close at Rs 336 and Jaiprakash Associates lost 7% to end at 194.

Sterlite and ACC lost 6% each to end at Rs 722 and Rs 701 respectively.

The stocks to buck the weak trend were Bharti (stronger by 2% at Rs 299) and Maruti (higher by 1% at Rs 1,418).

The market breadth turned substantially negative at close, with 4 declining stocks behind every advancing stock. Out of 2,759 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 2,167 declining stocks as against 536 advances.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 206.91 crore, followed by State Bank of India (Rs 183.90 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 169.01 crore), Bharti (Rs 148.18 crore) and Reliance Natural Resources (Rs 145.51 crore),

Suzlon leads the volume charts with trades of 22.15 million shares, followed by Reliance Natural Resources (21.49 million), Unitech (11.58 million), Ispat (8.75 million) and Reliance Communication (7.03 million).