Markets continue negative run; Sensex down 265 points

A decline marked afternoon transactions on the bourses, as the Sensex dropped 265 points to 18,184, and the Nifty lost 78 points at 5,449. The top losers on the Sensex were Mahindra & Mahindra at rs 679 down 4%, Tata Power at Rs 1185, TCS at Rs 1148 and L&T at Rs 1587, all down 3%. Realty continued to languish as the sectoral loser down 2.3% at 2,224. Top losers on the index were DB Realty down 7% at Rs 145, Unitech at Rs 44 down 5% and Indiabulls Real Estate down 3% at Rs 119. IT stocks saw steady selling, as a result of which the index declined 2% at 6283. Amongst the highest losing stocks were TCS down 3% at Rs 1148, HCL Technologies at Rs 481 and Wipro at Rs 435, both down 2%. Although the Consumer Durables was leading the sectoral chart, it was trading flat with a negative bias at 5,972. FMCG stocks, under pressure due to companies such as Marico, Dabur and Asian Paints having temporarily aborted their operations at Egypt following a spurt in violence and civil unrest due to the Hosni Mubarak fiasco, saw some relief as the index, which was down 2% at 1300 hours, partially recovered losses to trade down 1% at 3,276 at 1330 hours. The broader markets outperformed the benchmark, although they were in trading in the red. The Mid-cap index saw a decline of 0.5% at 6,797, while the Small-cap index shed 0.7% at 8,410. The market breadth was negative, with 1,654 declines versus 1,084 advances.