The Sensex is now quoting at 16301, weaker by 218 points and the Nifty is at 4880, down 67 points.
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(Updated at 1013am)
Hope often springs forth from the depth of despair. Just when the skies seem to have fallen, with the benchmark indices shedding more than 2% at opening bell in tandem with their global counterparts, there has been some retracement of the early morning losses. The Sensex, which had opened nearly 400 points in the red, is now quoting at 16304, weaker by 221 points and the Nifty is at 4877, down 70 points. The midcap index is lower by 1.9% at 6647 and the smallcap index is down 2.1% at 8358.
All the sectoral indices on the BSE continue to trade in the red. However, having shed a mere half a per cent, the FMCG space is a relative outperfomer. Among the individual stocks that have bucked the weak trend, Cipla has strengthened by 1.7% at Rs 323, M&M has added 0.7% at Rs 526 and ITC is up 0.4% at Rs 263.
The losers pack is being led by the metal and realty counters. Hindalco has weakened by 4.2% at Rs 149, Sterlite has shed 3.6% at Rs 628 and Wipro has lost 3.5% at Rs 628. Jaiprakash Associates, Tata Motors and Tata Steel have lost between 3% and 4% each. In the realty space, HDIL and Sobha Developers have shed more than 4%, while DLF and Unitech have lost more than 3% each. And index heavyweight Reliance Industries has recovered fronm its intra-day lows of Rs 976 and is now down 1.4% at Rs 985.
And the market breadth is overwhelmingly in favour of the bears. Out of 2370 stocks traded on the BSE, there are 379 advancing stocks as against a whooping 1936 declines.
But time alone will tell whether this is a technical pullback and a dead-cap bounce of sorts or a precursor to a short-covering rally in the immediate future, given that we are in oversold territory.
