Markets continued to reel under intense selling pressure in the noon deals on the back of negative global cues and mounting concerns regarding Europe's debt crisis.
The Sensex was at 16,152, down 300 points and the Nifty was at 4,845, weaker by 98 points. The Sensex had touched a low of 16,056 earlier in the day.
Hormuz Maloo, Technical Analyst, Geojit BNP Paribas, said, "The market continues to be in a downtrend. Medium term resistance for Nifty is at the recent high of approx 5170 levels. Once the support at 4720 is broken, markets may move down rapidly".
Meanwhile, the European markets have also opened in the negative territory adding to the worries in the Indian markets. The CAC 40 index opened at 2,896, lower by 2.86%, FTSE shed 2.76% to open at 4,987 and the DAX opened at 5,294, lower by 3.7% or 205 points.
Back home, all the Sensex stocks barring Maruti Suzuki and Mahindra & Mahindra were trading in the red. Metal stocks were among the worst hit on the benchmark index. Jindal Steel was the top loser, down 5.6% to Rs 476. Hindalco, was down nearly 5% to Rs 125. Tata Steel and Sterlite Industries were also trading lower by 4% each. Among the other Sensex stocks, DLF, Wipro, J P Associates, ICICI Bank, Larsen & Toubro, Tata Power, State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries and HDFC were also trading lower by 2.5%-5% each.
Meanwhile, the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group stocks bucked the trend after witnessing a steep fall in the previous session on reports that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has given a clean chit to a group chairman Anil Ambani, in the structuring of different firms and transfer of funds relating to Swan Telecom, in 2G scam.
On the sectoral front, all the indices were in the negative territory. The BSE Realty index was the top loser, down nearly 4% or 67 points at 1,695. BSE Metal index slipped 3.6% to 10,604. Bankex, Capital Goods, Consumer Durables, IT, FMCG, Power, PSU and Oil & Gas indices also lost 1.2%-2.8% each in trades thus far.
Sobha Developers was the top loser among the realty stocks, down 6.3% to Rs 203. HDIL, DLF, Anant Raj Industries, D B Realty, Unitech, Indiabulls Real Estate and Phoenix Mills were also trading weaker by 2.7%-5.5% each.
Among the banking stocks, Yes Bank, Axis bank, Union Bank, Federal Bank, HDFC Bank, State bank of India and Kotak Mahindra
Bank were the top losers.
The broader markets also languished in trades. The BSE mid-cap index was down 110 points to 6,020 and the small-cap index lost 100 points to 6,781.
The overall breadth was extremely poor as 1,838 stocks were declining while 696 stocks were advancing.