Sensex down 231 points at 16,053

The BSE Sensex opened on a subdued note at 16,191, down 92 points on Thursday from the previous close mirroring extremely negative vibes from the global markets.

US stocks on Wednesday tumbled after weak data on new home sales heightened concerns about the pace of the economic recovery.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 119 points (1.21%) to 9,762 -- its third triple-digit drop in four days.

The Nasdaq Composite Index slid 56 points, or 3% to 2,059. The Asian markets were even hammered badly today. The Hang Seng and the Seoul Composite slipped over 2% each.

The BSE index after slipping into the low, recovered partially to touch a high of 16,264 but failed to retain its upward momentum and dropped to a low of 16,994, down 271 points from the highest point of the day.

The BSE Realty and the metal indices were under tremedous pressure down around 6% and 3%, respectively.

The Sensex finally ended at 16,053, down 231 points. The NSE Nifty finally settled at 4,751, down 76 points.

Index shakers...

DLF slumped 7% to Rs 376 and Reliance Communications tumbled 6.5% to Rs 190.

ICICI Bank shed 5% to Rs 771 and Jaiprakash Associates declined 4% to Rs 212.

BHEL, Tata Steel, Hindalco, Maruti, NTPC, Infosys and Reliance Infrastructure shed 2-4% each.

The other prominent losers include Sterlite, Hero Honda, Bharti Airtel, TCS and Reliance Industries, down below 2% each.

...And the movers

Mahindra & Mahindra soared 4% to Rs 928 on the back of a 185% jump in Q2 net profit. ONGC added 2.5% to Rs 1,167 and Sun Pharma was up 2% at Rs 1,404, respectively.

The market breadth was extremely negative, out of 2,745 shares traded, 1,854 declined and 822 advanced so fra on the BSE.

Value & Volume Toppers...

HDIL topped the value chart on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 185.53 crore, followed by Unitech (Rs 180.55 crore), Sesa Goa (Rs 165.23 crore), SBI (Rs 144.94 crore) and Reliance (Rs 143.41 crore).

The volumes chart was led by unitech with trades of nearly 22 million shares, followed by Suzlon (14.70 million), Zee News (9.23 million), Ispat industries (7.43 million) and Thinksoft (7.39 million).