The Hindu Business Line : Markets jolted by bearish onslaught

THE dream run for the markets received a jolt on Wednesday as profit booking by investors and speculators dragged them down. On a day marked by high volatility, the benchmark Sensex shed 22 points at its close of 9241.7, snapping its five-day rally. The broader Nifty also moved in sync with the Sensex, losing about eight points.

Markets opened on a positive note, but witnessed a high degree of volatility in subsequent sessions. Sensex kissed the 9300-mark during intra-day trade and scaled a new high of 9309. It, however, found it difficult to sustain the gains, as investors who appeared to be on a selling spree booked profits. The bearish sentiment was widespread as most of the sectoral indices ended in negative territory.

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Mid-cap and small-cap stocks, which remained subdued over the last few sessions, continued with their disappointing performance. Prominent losers in this space were Sasken Communications, Maducon Projects, Bajaj Hindustan, EID Parry, Hindustan Oil Exploration, Mahavir Spinning, Alstom Projects, KEC International and Taj GVK among others. Those which managed to attract the bulls included Man Industries, Indiabulls, Bombay Dyeing, Geojit Financial, Era Constructions, IL&FS Investsmart, SpiceJet and Deepak Fertilizers .

Information technology stocks at large were characterised by lacklustre performance. Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Geometric Software, Allsec Technology and Sonata Software came in for sharp selling pressure. i-flex, Polaris, TCS and HCL Technologies were among the few that managed to reverse the trend.

Stocks in the capital goods space bore the brunt of the bearish onslaught. TRF, Alstom Projects, Emco, L&T, Numeric Power and Astra Microwave suffered sharp losses. Alfa Laval, Nelco, Usha Martin and BEML, however, ended the day with modest gains.

Metals counter was buzzing with activity, with a good number of stocks putting up a smart show. SAIL was a significant gainer whose stock flared by 6.4 per cent to close for the day at Rs 56. Hindalco, Uttam Galva, Monnet Ispat and Mahindra Ugine also netted off handsome gains.

It was the day for banking sector stocks, which witnessed a sharp rally. Mirroring the gains in these stocks, the BSE BANKEX gained 1.9 per cent.

Stock-specific action: AIA Engineering rose 56 per cent on its trading debut in Mumbai. The shares closed at Rs 491.3 compared to the initial offer price of Rs 315. Indian Hotels was up 0.1 per cent following announcement that it bought a hotel in Australia.