Selling pressure resumes

The mid-noon attempts at a pullback have been nipped in the bud. Just when the Sensex appeared on course for a recovery, hitting an intra-day high of 17,584, the bears seemed to have pressed the sell button once again. The Sensex is now down 232 points at 17358 and the Nifty has shed 74 points at 5187. The mid-cap and smallcap indices have also lost more than 1% at 6933 and 8870 respectively.

Tata Steel has lost further ground and is now down 4.1% at Rs 665. DLF has shed  3.8% at Rs 317 and Sterlite has lost 3.1% at Rs 811. Wipro, Reliance Infra and ONGC are the other notable losers. And index heavyweight RIL has shed 1.9% at Rs 1062.

On the gainers side, Hindalco has added 1.1% at Rs 176. HDFC and Bharti are trading flat, with a positive bias, at Rs 2682 and Rs 304 respectively.

The market breadth is weak. Out of 2996 stocks traded on the BSE, there are 835 00 advancing stocks as against 2018 declines.