Sensex ends below 10,000 led by oil & gas, bank stocks

22 December 2008

The markets closed the day on a weak note led by a sell-off in banking, capital goods, technology, OMCs and select power and auto stocks as well as Reliance Industries. Weak global cues was an another reason for the bleeding. Midcap and smallcap indices also turned into red.

The benchmark indices had opened flat in early trade and remained volatile till afternoon trade. As European markets opened weak, our markets also slowly started slipping into red and in the last one hour of trade, the Sensex tested the 9,900 mark and the Nifty remained below the 3,050 level.

Major draggers were Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank, BHEL, HDFC Bank, SAIL, SBI, HDFC, Reliance Infrastructure and Maruti Suzuki. However, realty stocks remained on the buyers' radar.

The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 171.56 points or 1.7%, to close at 9,928.35, after hitting an intraday high of 10,173.34 and low of 9,894.01. The 50-share NSE Nifty settled below 3050 level. It closed at 3039.30, down 1.24% or 38.20 from previous close. It swung nearly 83 points between a high/low of 3110.45 and 3027.80, respectively.

Profit booking was seen mainly in banking, oil and slect capital goods and auto stocks. BSE Bankex was down 139.44 points or 2.48% at 5,491.78. Among the banking stocks, ICICI Bank lost 5.49% and Kotak Mahindra down 4.82%. HDFC Bank fell 3.01% and SBI lost 1.03%.

Oil & Gas Index tumbled 194.61 points or 3.02%, to settle at 6,249.20. Reliance Industries crashed 4.78%. Shares of oil marketing companies like BPCL, IOC and HPCL were down 1.8-4.9%. However, ONGC was up just 0.13% as Oil Secretary said considering cut in upstream companies' subsidy burden.