Jan jitters begin…Nifty, Sensex see sudden crash
The Indian equity market collapsed sharply on Thursday post noon. Market participants feel some basket selling would have happened near the crucial 6350 levels for the Nifty. The selling was so intense that barring the BSE IT index all the other BSE sectoral indices ended in the negative terrain. It was a day filled with rumors mostly political in nature. Global cues were also subdued; markets like Taiwan also tanked and expectations are the US markets will open in the red.
The NSE Nifty just managed to hold on to the 6200 mark by close. It was a day of wild gyrations as the Nifty index was seen swinging almost 150 points while the Sensex gyrated over 475 points from their respective intra-day highs and lows.
After opening with a positive bias, markets entered into a tight trading range for the first half of the day. India's manufacturing sector ended the year 2013 on a bit of pessimistic note as growth fell in December against the previous month according to HSBC purchasing managers' index (PMI). The PMI was down at 50.7 points in December from 51.3 in the previous month. This is the second month in a row when manufacturing activities registered a growth after falling since August.
Finally, BSE Sensex closed at 20,888 down 252 points, while NSE Nifty closed at 6,221 down 80 points over the previous close.
Barring PowerGrid, TCS, Infosys, Sun Pharma, Maruti and Wipro all the other constituents of the NSE Nifty index ended in the red.
Among the top losers were, IDFC, JP Associates, PNB, Tata Power, L&T, Coal India, Asian Paints and Grasim.
The advance decline ratio favoured the bears. On the BSE, 1564 stocks declined against 1038 advancing stocks, while 129 remained unchanged.
The INDIA VIX surged 6.2% at 16.55. It hit a day’s high of 16.97 and low of 15.33…
