Selling continues, Sensex down 400 points

The markets have extended losses in the last half-hour of trades. The Sensex is now down over 400 points at 16,060. The NSE Nifty has shed 125 points at 4,818.
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(Updated at 1300 hrs)

The markets continued to reel under the selling pressure. The Sensex was at 16,168, down 306 points and the S&P CNX Nifty was down 85 points at 4,857.

According to Shailesh Kadam, AVP, Institutional Derivatives, PINC Research, "We expect Nifty to take support at the 4,800 levels and give a bounceback from those levels, but this bounceback will be shortlived and we expect Nifty to drift to 4,500 levels."

Meanwhile, the European markets also opened lower adding to the worries in the Indian markets. CAC 40, FTSE and DAX have declined around 1.5% each in opening trades.

Back home, Infosys was the top loser among the Sensex stocks. It was followed by Tata Motors, TCS, Hindalco, Larsen & Toubro, Sterlite Industries, BHEL, Jindal Steel, Sun Pharma and ICICI Bank, down 2-6.5% each. On the other hand, Coal India, Hero MtoCorp, ONGC, Tata Power and State Bank of India were among notable gainers on the charts.

All the sectoral indices were reeling under intense selling pressure. BSE IT index was the worst hit, down 5% or 246 points at 4,710 levels. Capital Goods index had shed 3.4% or 408 points to 11,629. Consumer Durables, Power, Healthcare, Metal, Bankex and Realty indices were also trading lower by 1-2.6% each on the BSE.

Infosys continued to lead the losers pack among the IT stocks. The stock was down 6.3% to Rs 2,213. Patni Computer, TCS, MphasiS, Oracle Financial Services Software, HCL Technologies and Financial Technologies were also trading lower by 3-4.5% each.

Among the capital goods stocks, Suzlon Energy, Areva T&D, Larsen & Toubro, BHEL, Punj Lloyd, BGR Energy and SKF India  were among the top losers.

The broader markets also took a beating in today's session thus far. The BSE mid-cap index was down nearly 2% or 116 points at 6,095 and the small-cap index lost 2.2% or 160 points at 6,987.

However, shares of oil marketing companies were trading on a firm note on back of fall in the international crude oil prices. IOCL, Bharat Petroleum and HPCL added 0.6-2% each.

The overall breadth was extremely poor as 2,075 stocks declined while a mere 554 stocks advanced.