Sensex falls more than 600 pts in freak trade

The markets have been trading soft since morning and a loss of around 250 points on the Sensex would not raise any eyebrows. 

But a fall of more than 5%, and a sudden one at that, would be exceptional. The Sensex's 600 point-plunge within the blink of an eye suggests but a freak trade, perhaps a punching error on the part of some unfortunate trader.

Going by BSE data, the error would have occured on the RIL counter. For the index heavyweight, which opened at Rs 1045 and touched a high of Rs 1049 and is currently trading well over the 1000 mark at Rs 1010, witnessed a steep fall of around 20 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange in a freak / fat finger trade today. The stock dipped to Rs 840.55, down Rs 204.50 or 19.56% before recovering most of the losses. Around 7.58 lakh shares were traded in the counter.