Sensex dips for 5th day, Rs 25,000 cr m-cap lost

The stock market continues to be in the grip of a bear hug. For the fifth consecutive trading day, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex slumped today, falling 170 points to the day's low of 4665.21 on institutional and fund-selling before late buying helped it recover a bit.

The Sensex finally closed at 4759.62, down 1.57 per cent (75.77 points) from Friday's close in an extremely volatile trading session.

Indeed, today's dip saw Rs 25,000 crore in market capitalisation wiped out. As a result, market capitalisation on the bourse has fallen below the Rs 10 lakh crore mark to Rs 9, 83, 456 crore.

However, the technology scrips bucked the trend. The BSE IT sector index was the biggest gainer today, up 1.44 per cent and the TECk index gained 1.36 per cent. But prices of bank stocks were hammered.

The BSE banking sector index, Bankex, plunged 136 points or 5.4 per cent to 2,382.42 from its Friday close of 2518.42. With this, banking share prices have slipped to the third position in the market capitalisation sweepstakes, from the second position. Stocks of refinery companies remain at number one, followed by information technology sector stocks at number two.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) Nifty fell 25.15 points to close at 1,483.60.

Fears of foreign fund outflows increasing and oil price concerns seem to have severely dented market sentiment which is at a low owing to worries about the new government's economic policies, brokers said.

Hitesh Sheth, vice-president, technical research, Prabhudas Lilladher, said, "The markets opened with a gap, which seems to have become a trend of late, but recovered from lower levels. The markets should stabilise at these levels. On the flip side, there is stiff resistance at 4600-levels."

The broader market was negative, with only 362 gainers versus 1,263 losers on the BSE. The 30-scrip Sensex basket saw 24 scrips closing lower.

Dr Reddy's Labs was the biggest loser in the Sensex basket, down 10.29 per cent to Rs 796.25, followed by ICICI Bank, down 6.49 per cent to Rs 230.35 and Bharti Tele-Ventures, whose share price fell 6.27 per cent to Rs 138.25.

Tech bellwether Infosys Technologies was the biggest gainer in the Sensex basket today, up 3.01 per cent to Rs 5,208.90, followed by Satyam Computer, gaining 2.80 per cent to Rs 313.60. Wipro rose 1.51 per cent to Rs 1,527.25.

State Bank of India fell 4.09 per cent to Rs 465, ITC was down 0.45 per cent to Rs 878.95, Reliance Industries fell 0.13 per cent to Rs 430.50 and HLL was down 0.11 per cent to Rs 137.10.

Tata Motors was down 5.22 per cent to Rs 366.55, Maruti Udyog fell 4.42 per cent to Rs 386.70 and Hero Honda Motor was down 1.33 per cent to Rs 446.20.

Bhel was down 5.99 per cent to Rs 435.10, Tata Power fell 4.60 per cent to Rs 262.25 and Reliance Energy was down 2.35 per cent to Rs 486.05.

ONGC fell 3.71 per cent to Rs 625.45 and HPCL was down 4.10 per cent to Rs 300.65.

Volumes in the market were lower than on Friday, with the BSE registering a turnover of Rs 2,032.76 crore and the NSE Rs 4,502.19 crore in the cash segment.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought net shares worth Rs 189.10 crore on Friday but have been net sellers to the tune of Rs 3271.80 crore in May so far. Mutual funds sold net shares worth Rs 75.60 crore on Friday but have been net buyers to the tune of Rs 1155.90 crore in May.

Equity derivatives saw interest waning in trading as volumes declined in the spot market. Nifty June futures fell to close at 1,472 points, sharply at a discount to the spot S&P CNX Nifty that was last traded at 1492.25. The spot Nifty finally closed at 1483.60, down 1.67 per cent.

Market participants said that bargain buying at lower levels helped the market recover almost all losses in afternoon trades, led by value buying in tech scrips, which are unlikely to be affected by political developments. But sustained selling pressure coupled with lack of buying dragged it down again.