The markets frittered the advantage of a marginally positive opening and dashed hopes of a rebound following Monday's sedate closing to have another disappointing closing. Shedding around 400 points from its intra-day highs, the Sensex ended below the psychological 18k mark at 17776, weaker by 260 points, and the Nifty lost further ground below the 5400 mark at 5311, down 84 points. And the broader market space outperformed on the way down; the midcap index ended at 6537, weaker by 161 points or 2.4% and the smallcap index shut shop at 7995, down 265 points or 2.3%. Realty, auto and banking received a mauling at the hand of the rampaging bears and the extent of the damage since January can be guaged by the fact that the power, capital goods and PSU indices touched 52-week lows in this session.
The failure of the all-party meet convened by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to break the deadlock over the demand for a JPC probe into 2G spectrum issue seems to have dented the sentiment in the later part of trade. And two additional instances of suspect spectrum allocation only added to the prevalent nervousness. As per reports, the government is probing the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for a 2005 allocation of mobile internet spectrum without a proper bidding process that may have cost the exchequer up to Rs 2 trillion. The government is also reportedly investigating whether the state-run telecom company BSNL appointed franchises for broadband wireless access without charging any upfront payment.
On the global front, Wall Street had advanced to its highest levels since June 2008 in overnight trades as a flurry of merger news and solid earnings sparked broad gains. The Dow Jones was up 77 points and Nasdaq was up 21 points at 2,790. The key benchmark indices in South Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore fell about half a percent each, while Japan's Nikkei index rose by a similar margin. The Chinese markets, which have been shut for the Lunar New Year holidays, will resume trading on Wednesday. The European markets, including the FTSE, DAX and CAC, are trading with a positive bias in mid-morning trades.
In the realty space, Unitech crumbled by 7% at Rs 41, Indiabulls Real Estate shed 4.3% at Rs 113 and HDIL lost 3.4% at Rs 137. In the auto space, Ashok Leyland plunged by 5% at Rs 50, M&M lost 5% at Rs 628 and Hero Honda lost 4% at Rs 1513. The banking space saw the likes of Yes Bank weakening by 4.3% at Rs 248, ICICI Bank shedding 2.9% at Rs 951 and HDFC Bank losing 1.7% at Rs 2004. Additionally, ONGC tanked by 5.5% at Rs 281 after turning ex-bonus and ex-stock split today. The company's board had earlier declared the sub-division of each equity share of Rs 10 each fully paid-up into two equity shares of Rs 5 each and issue of bonus shares in the proportion of one new equity bonus share of Rs 5 each for every one existing share of Rs 5 each and had fixed February 09 as the record date for the purpose. And index heavyweight RIL was down 1.4% at Rs 915.
Among the stocks to buck the carnage, Bajaj Auto jumped by 1.6% at Rs 1238, Tata Power gained 1.4% at Rs 1211 andb Hindalco Cipla strengthened by 0.8% at Rs 317.
The market breadth was weak, with the losers outnumbering the gainers in the ratio of 4:1. Out of 2986 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 551 advancing stocks as against 2299 declines.