CLOSING TODAY

The Sensex opened with a negative gap of neagtive gap of 30 points at 14,647, which also turned out to be the high for the day. Sustained selling in banking and power stocks saw the index plunge to a low of 14,201 - an intra-day swing of 446 points. The Sensex finally closed with a loss of 434 points (2.96%) at 14,244. All the sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE Bankex and the Realty index dropped over 5% each. Market breadth was extremely bearish - out of over 2,710 scrips traded, over 1,900 declined. SBI dopped over 7% to Rs 1,342. HDFC Bank slipped nearly 6% to Rs 1,166. ICICI Bank declined over 5% to Rs 643. NTPC was down nearly 6% at Rs 173. BHEL was down nearly 4% at Rs 1,670. Reliance Infra and Jaiprakash also closed with losses. DLF was down over 5% at 482. HDFC, RCom, Hindalco, L&T and ONGC also declined. Ranbaxy moved up over 1% to Rs 513. Total market turnover (BSE+NSE) was Rs 64,692 crore - above 5-day average. Reliance Capital was the most active counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 226 crore followed by Vishal IT (Rs 201 crore), Reliance (Rs 173 crore), RNRL (Rs 146 crore) and SBI (Rs 126 crore).