The sell-off on Wall Street and the Asian markets saw the Sensex open with a negative gap of 289 points at 12,694. The index soon dropped to a low of 12,504 -- down 479 points from the previous close. Lack of buying interest saw the Sensex finally close with a loss of 453 points (3.5%) at 12,530. The NSE Nifty closed at 3,641, down 130 points.
The BSE Bankex dropped over 4% to 6268. The BSE Teck index slipped nearly 4% to 3438. The BSE Capital Goods Index was down over 3% at 8559. All the other sectoral indices, too, finished with sharp losses on Wednesday.
The market breadth was extremely negative -- out of 2,576 scrips traded, 1,770 declined and 742 advanced on Wednesday.
Losers and gainers
ICICI Bank led the decline with a drop of over 5% to Rs 830.
Bharti Airtel slumped nearly 5% to Rs 729. Reliance Communications dropped over 4% to Rs 398.
Wipro dropped 4.6% to Rs 555. Satyam, Infosys and TCS were all down over 4% each at Rs 433, Rs 2,019 and Rs 1,213, respectively.
ITC slipped over 4% to Rs 143. BHEL was down 4% at Rs 2,030.
While Bajaj was up Rs 10 at Rs 2,529, Gujarat Ambuja was up marginally at Rs 106.
Most Active Counters
MindTree was the most active counter with a turnover of Rs 824 crore (Rs 8.24 billion) followed by Parsvnath (Rs 129 crore or Rs 1.29 billion), Tech Mahindra (Rs 126 crore or Rs 1.26 billion), Reliance (Rs 112 crore or Rs 1.12 billion) and Reliance Communications (Rs 98 crore or Rs 980 million).