The slaughter in the stock market over the past seven trading sessions has wiped out what the Sensex had gained in more than seven months since July 2007.
In its seventh straight loss, the market benchmark Sensex on Tuesday lost as much as 2,273 points in intra-day trade and, despite a sharp recovery, settled 875.41 points below Monday's closing.
The 30-share index has lost 4,097.51 points in seven sessions since January 14. It was down as much as 5,874.35 points from its life-time high of 21,206.77 points, scaled on January 10, when it touched an intra-day low of 15,332.42 points on Tuesday. The Sensex had first touched this level on July 16, soon after it crossed the 15,000 level on July 6.
Incidentally, when the Sensex crossed 15,000, analysts were bullish on the Sensex crossing even the 50,000 level in the years to come. However, in the past eight days, ever since the downslide began, the Sensex has slipped from above 21,000 to below 16,000-point mark.
This plunge has also led to the mood turning bearish and some of the market players are predicting that some further "correction" might be in store.
"The downward spiralling in the market is likely to continue for the next three-four days. A lot depends on how the US market performs when it reopens today after a gap of three days," Taurus Asset Management Co's Managing Director R K Gupta said.