Markets recover at close

The markets rebounded strongly towards close, riding on the back of a recovery in Europe. The Sensex recovered more than 400 points from its intra-day lows to close at 16,632, down 222 points and the Nifty ended at 4,943, lower by 62 points.

After nosediving in early trades, pressurised by banking and commodity stocks, the major European markets are now down only 0.5-1%.

Dubai jitters had weighed on investor sentiment in early trades. Asia and Europe tumbled after Dubai's government-owned investment company Dubai World asked for a restructuring of its debt amounting to $59 billion (£35bn). The company was hit hard by the global credit crunch and recession.

 

Jaiprakash Associates was the top loser on the Sensex, shedding 3% at Rs 214. L&T dropped 2.7% to Rs 1586 and Infosys declined 2.4% to Rs 2,328. TCS and Sterlite were the other major losers.

Bharti Airtel was the leading Sensex gainer, adding 0.9% at Rs 283. Hero Honda put on 0.5% at Rs 1,745 and Reliance Infrastructure strengthened 0.4% at Rs 1,039.

After languishing in the red throughout most of the session, Tata Steel made a smart recovery to end up 0.2% at Rs 544.

The market breadth was extremely negative. Out of 2,800 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,029 stocks declined, while 725 moved up.

Dinesh Thakkar-CMD Angel Broking, said, “The debt servicing problems surfacing in Dubai has sent jitters to the markets across Asia, Europe and back home which were deep in red. I believe that the impact on bourses especially in India would be short lived as the exposure of the India and Indian corporates to Dubai is not significant. Further, the same is unlikely to deter the liquidity flows towards the Indian bourses, which provides the global investors an exposure to the high growth and profitability destination. Hence investors should use the opportunity provided from the knee-jerk reaction of the markets to enhance exposure to equities.”   

Tata Steel topped the value charts with a turnover of Rs 249.11 crore. This was followed by HDIL at Rs 207.67 crore, Suzlon at Rs 194.63 crore, SBI at Rs 187.93 crore and Reliance at Rs 176.36 crore.

Suzlon led the volumes charts, clocking total trades of 27.40 million shares, followed by Unitech at 15.27 million shares, IFCI at 10.80 million shares, HDIL at 6.92 million shares and Ispat at 6.27 million shares.