Sensex tumbles 172 pts; metals main losers

The week started on a dismal note for the domestic markets owing to weak global cues after Beijing tightened its monetary policy over the weekend.

The Sensex opened at 17,537, down 22 points, and soon extended losses. The index continued to exhibit weakness throughout the day owing to selling in metal stocks.  The benchmark index slumped to a fresh intraday low of 17,346 as the European markets too started the day on a negative note.

The Sensex finally ended  with loss of 172 points at 17,386. The NSE Nifty ended  at 5,222 down 55 points.

The midcap and the smallcap indices were down 0.5% each at 7,152 and 9,168, respectively. South Indian Bank was the major dragger on the midcap index and Sundaram Clayton slipped 9%, respectively.

The market breadth was negative, out of 2,952 shares traded, 1,644 declined and 1,222 advanced on the BSE.

Among the sectoral indices, metal index was down 2% at 17,321.

INDEX LOSERS...

Metal stocks like Reliance Infrastructure, Hindalco and Sterlite slipped 3% each to Rs 1.102, Rs 174 and Rs 809, respectively.

Hindustan Unilever, Tata Motors, Jaiprakash Associates, Grasim Industries and Tata Steel were down over 1.5% each.

The other major losers were Infosys, ICICI Bank, Cipla and DLF, down 1% each.

...AND THE GAINERS

Hero Honda advanced 1% to Rs 1,921. It was followed by Reliance Communication and Maruti Suzuki, up 0.2%

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Tata Steel topped the value chart on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 93.17 crore. It was followed by Sesa Goa (Rs 86.52 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs 82.14 crore), SBI (Rs 78.92 crore) and Tata Motors (Rs 75.45 crore).

Cals Refineries led the volume chart on the BSE with trades of 15.69 million shares. It was followed by Birla Power (12.29 crore), RNRL (11.13 crore), FCS Software (7.94 crore) and Visal Infotech (5.43 crore).