The Hindu Business Line : Sustained selling pressure marks the bout

Selling pressure was sustained through out the trading session and except for banking sector that found support from institutional buyers, stocks in most other industry segments where either driven down or ended up with just marginal gains.

An inkling of the potential correction that the major indices could witness was sampled on the last trading session of the previous week and the same was repeated on Monday's session too. The benchmark 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index (Sensex) was down sharply by about 115 points intra-day and only institutional support managed to push the index back up by about 60 points from this low.

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Monday's trading at the BSE took the Sensex from its opening of 6,152 points to an intraday low of 6,037 points. Scattered buying support helped the index recover partly to close at 6,067 points, a fall of nearly 52 points or 0.85 per cent over the previous close on Friday.

A total of 21 stocks out of the Sensex 30 declined in value, while 8 stocks advanced. The price earnings multiple of Sensex stocks dropped back to below the 20 times level.

The broader 50-share index of the National Stock Exchange, the Nifty, was down by around 1.33 per cent at 1,945.6 points compared with its previous close of 1,971.9 points. Amongst the biggest losers on the Nifty were GAIL, down by nearly 9.5 per cent at Rs 245.6; Tata Tea, down by over 5 per cent at Rs 377; and Indian Hotels, down by nearly 5 per cent at Rs 438. Sun Pharma, IPCL, Nalco and ABB were the other losers in the Nifty.

Oil sector and technology stocks witnessed selling pressure on Monday. FMCG stocks displayed a mixed trend. Profit-booking was being witnessed in cement stocks too. Selective buying support was evident in some public sector stocks and top-rung FMCG stocks. Some PSU stocks, such as GAIL and IOC, were down due to rising concerns about the fate of their initial public offerings after the recent announcement of early elections.

The major losers amongst the Sensex stocks on Monday's session were Reliance Industries, down by Rs 5.9 at Rs 570; Infosys Technologies, down by Rs 85 at Rs 5,720; Hindustan Lever, which has been gaining slowly over the last few sessions was down by Rs 3 at Rs 208; HDFC was down by over 2.3 per cent at about Rs 632; Hindalco, Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Satyam Computers were all down by over 2 per cent; Grasim Industries and Bajaj Auto were both down by nearly 3.5 per cent, and Wipro and BSES were down by over 1 per cent.

The other big losers were ONGC, down by over 5 per cent at Rs 865; ACC down by over 3 per cent at Rs 262; Cipla down by nearly 2.7 per cent at Rs 1,329; BHEL down 2.4 per cent at Rs 562; Zee Telefilms down 1.9 per cent at Rs 162; and Gujarat Ambuja Cements was down by 1.23 per cent at about Rs 317. Bharti Televentures, which has been posting gains consistently for the last two to three weeks was down marginally on Monday at Rs 119.

The public sector telecom giant Mahanagar Telephone Nigam and FMCG major ITC were the prominent gainers. MTNL went up by 4.9 per cent at Rs 153; and ITC was up Rs 31.5 at Rs 1113.7 as at close of the session. The other gainers that inched up from that list, which was otherwise pockmarked with red, were ICICI Bank, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Tata Iron and Steel, Tata Motors, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Hero Honda Motors.

Amongst the BSE's sectoral indices, the BANKEX was the only one to post a gain on Monday. The prominent gainers in sector were Punjab National Bank with an over 7 per cent jump, both Corporation Bank and Canara Bank went up by over 3 per cent and Bank of Baroda, up 2.7 per cent.