One in five stocks buck downtrend

All was not lost in today's market plunge as about 20% of stocks managed to register gains while a few of them also scaled new peaks.

Among the blue-chips, public sector energy giant ONGC bucked the bearish trend and rose by over 1%. Giving it company in the gainers' club, were state-run oil market companies HPCL, Indian Oil and BPCL.

In total there were 556 stocks who managed to rise in today's trade, when the benchmark Sensex slumped by over 700 points to slip below 17,000-level briefly before closing at 17,305.87 points.

However, the losers were much higher in number at 2,365, accounting for about 80% of a total of about 3,000 actively traded stocks at the BSE.

The gainers included NMDC, Petronet LNG, Shriram Transport, JSW Steel, Indraprastha Gas, IRB Infra, Thermax, Exide, Union Bank, LIC Housing Finance, Zee Entertainment, Dish TV, Cipla, Oil India, Castrol, Jindal Saw, Mundra Port, Canara Bank and Yes Bank.

Incidentally, many of these stocks have been under tremendous selling pressure in the recent past and the analysts said that further fall in today's morning trade was seen as good buying opportunity.

In fact, around 10 stocks managed to scale their new life-time highs during today's trade. However, most of these are little known small companies and included JSL Industries, Olympic Oil, Warren Tea, Hindoostan Mills and Golden Securities.

On the other hand, close to 100 stocks hit their lowest ever levels in today's trade.

These included GV Films, NDTV, GTL Infra, Great Offshore, Koutons, Burnpur Cements, Indiabulls Securities, Onmobile Global, Adani Power, Den Network, Indiabulls Power, JSW Energy, Cantabil Retail, Punjab & Sind Bank and Oberoi Realty.