Oil fears, Intel send markets reeling --- sensex down by 224 points
Mumbai: Fears of oil price hike and profit warning from Intel on Thursday sent the markets reeling on Friday, termed "Black" by many. Players didn’t know what hit them as most ran helter skelter for cover, either squaring up positions and in the process incurring huge losses or trying to arrange for bank guarantees so as to fecilitate carrying forward their transactions. The fall was also in line with the general trend in other world markets which were weak. To make matters worse Friday was also the last day of the settlement at the BSE and many players compulsorily sold off their holdings.

The Bombay Stock Exchange sensex lost Rs 33,000 crore in terms of market capitalisation with the index declining by 224 points --- its 13th biggest fall ever and 9th biggest in the year 2000.

Twenty-five A-group shares on the BSE hit their 52-week lows.

Nikhil Gholani, assistant vice- president at Anand Rathi Securities said, "The bloodbath was in line with the international trend. Further, absence of buying interest and unwinding of long positions due to the weekend created panic among players."

Interestingly, the outstanding position on the BSE declined by Rs 373 crore over Thursday.

Aspi Contractor, chief investment officer at Tata Asset Management Company, said," The expectation of a further fall in Nasdaq market had created a panic selling by operators."

The sensex opened at 4,188.47, touched an intra-day high of 4,208.66 and an intra day low of 4,028.49 before finally closing at 4,032.37, a loss of 224.83 points or 5.28 per cent. Meanwhile, the S&P CNX Nifty too lost 4.77 per cent to close at 1,329.85.

The aggregate market capitalisation depreciated to Rs 6,77,238 crore from Rs 7,10,542 crore.

The sensex has thus lost around 700 points in the past one week.

The prominent losers yesterday were stocks from the new economy such as Global Tele-Systems which fell by 16 per cent, SSI (13.36 per cent), Aptech (12.51 per cent), HFCL (12.28 per cent) and MTNL (9.44).

The other losers for the day on the BSE included Lupin Labs, Salora International, Aftek Infosys and Vikas WSP. The advance-decline ratio was unfavourable, with 191 advances and 524 losers.

However there were some gainers which included among others Amara Raja Batteries (6.58 per cent), Bombay Dyeing (1.65 per cent) and Crompton Greaves (1.36 per cent) Yesterday 127 stocks touched a 52-week low of which 25 were in the A group, 57 in the B1 group, 43 in B2 and 2 in the Z group.

In the A group, the stock that have hit a 52-week low included MTNL, NIIT, Cipla, Crisil and German Remedies. Pfizer was the only stock to touch a new high in yesterday’s turmoil market.
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