Sensex ends down 341pts; Rel Infra slumps 11%

The index, however, could not hold gains as persistent selling in banking, cement and realty stocks dragged the index into the negative zone. Heavy selling in the Reliance counter in late noon trades saw the index slide to a low of 13,405 - down 467 points from the day's high.

The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 341 points at 13,462. In the process, the index today ended the first half of 2008 with a massive loss of 6,825 points (33.6%).

The market breadth was fairly negative - out of 2,692 stocks traded, 2,107 declined, 543 advanced and 42 were unchanged today.

The NSE Nifty shed 96 points to end at 4,041.

INDEX SHAKERS...

Reliance Infrastructure slumped 11.5% to Rs 785. ACC tumbled nearly 10% to Rs 523.

Ambuja Cements plunged nearly 7% to Rs 76. Grasim, DLF and Reliance Communications shed around 6.5% each at Rs 1,815, Rs 396 and Rs 442, respectively.

Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra dropped 5% each to Rs 426 and Rs 485, respectively.

HDFC slipped 4.5% to Rs 1,962. Maruti, Reliance and SBI declined over 4% each to Rs 618, Rs 2,093 and Rs 1,111, respectively.

Larsen & Toubro dropped 3.7% to Rs 2,183. ICICI Bank and Bharti Airtel were down around 3.5% each at Rs 630 and Rs 722, respectively.

...AND THE MOVERS

Hindalco gained 2% at Rs 142.

ITC and Infosys advanced over 1.5% each to Rs 187 and Rs 1,735, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 380 crore followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs 262.70 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs 243.65 crore), debutant MVL (Rs 211 crore) and Niraj Cement (Rs 148 crore).

Debutant MVL led the volume chart with trades of around 2.37 crore shares followed by Reliance Petroleum (1.51 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (1.45 crore), Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals (84.60 lakh) and IFCI (81.65 lakh).