CRR Impact: Sensex slips 80pts, bank stocks hit

The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 101 points at 13,990. Weakness in morning trades, following the RBI move to hike CRR by 50bps, saw the index plunge to a low of 13,805 - down 286 points from the previous close.

Renewed buying at lower levels, mainly in metal and telecom stocks, saw the index recoup losses and touch an intra-day high of 14,037 towards the fag end of the session. The Sensex eventually closed with a loss of 81 points at 14,010 today.

While the BSE Bankex dropped 4% (290 points) to 6977, the Metal index moved up 1.6% to 8618.

The market breadth was negative - out of 2,564 stocks traded, 1,491 declined, 1,012 moved up and the rest were unchanged today.

INDEX MOVERS & SHAKERS

Banking stocks tumbled, across-the-board, following the RBI move yesterday. SBI plunged over 6% to Rs 1,101. HDFC Bank shed 5% to Rs 1,017, and ICICI Bank dropped 4% to Rs 915.

Oriental Bank of Commerce plunged over 7% to Rs 218. Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Federal Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Punjab National Bank and Union Bank declined 3-5% each.

Maruti slipped 3.8% to Rs 857, and Grasim declined 3.5% to Rs 2,656.

Tata Motors shed 1.7% to Rs 851. Infosys, Bajaj Auto and Hero Honda were down 1% each at Rs 2,284, Rs 3,016 and Rs 713, respectively.

Hindalco and Bharti Airtel surged around 3% each to Rs 146 and Rs 761, respectively. Reliance Communications and Wipro advanced over 2% each to Rs 451 and Rs 650, respectively.

ONGC moved up 1.7% to Rs 900. Tata Steel and Reliance Energy gained around 1.5% each at Rs 439 and Rs 547, respectively.

Satyam, ACC, Cipla were up 1% each at Rs 464, Rs 1,022 and Rs 246, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Debutant Cinemax India topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 171.20 crore followed by Infosys (Rs 104.80 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 102 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs 95.40 crore) and Indiabulls (Rs 92.30 crore).

IFCI led the volume chart with trades of around 3.27 crore shares followed by Cinemax India (1.10 crore), IDBI (56.70 lakh), Himachal Futuristic (50 lakh) and Reliance Natural Resources (44.36 lakh).