Sensex crashes by 348.20 pts, closes at low of 14,190.70 pts

Mumbai, Feb 12 (UNI) The Sensex today crashed by a whopping 348.20 points and closed in the red at 14,190.70 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on sustained heavy selling pressure by Foreign Institutional Investors (FII's) and domestic mutual funds, brokers said.

The Sensex plunged sharply for the second straight day after friday's decline. The BSE benchmark traded in the red throughout on continued selling.

The BSE benchmark also saw a bout of volatility, swinging sharply either ways. The 30-shares BSE Sensex settled at 348.20 points (2.39 per cent) in deficit, at 14,190.70, recovering some lost ground after plunging to a low of 14,146.22 on value-buying.

The BSE Sensex began on a highly bearish note, as selling pressure spilled over to this week. The decline had started on Friday, when the benchmark Sensex tumbled close to 113 points, as a lot of stop losses were triggered due to highly leveraged positions in the derivatives market. Its high for the day was 14,529.28.

Traders and speculators exited long positions and chose to sit on the sidelines before the Union Budget. Weak global markets also played spoilsport.

The BSE CG and METAL indices also plummited steeply by 513.69 points and 497.62 points respectively. They closed at 9425.92 points for CG index and for METAL index at 8616.43 poionts, followed by SML CAP index by 362.84 points and touched at 7127.26 points, MID CAP index by 243.34 points and qouted at 5821.45 points, BANKEX index by 197.48 points and touched at 7362.83 points, AUTO index by 196.03 points and touched at 5554.49 points, PSU index by 195.66 points and quoted at 6107.06 points and TECK index by 111.92 points and closed at 3787.75 points.

The S&P CNX Nifty index of NSE also lost 129.10 points (3.08 per cent) to 4058.30 before it resumed flat at 4187.20 points. It recorded a high at 4187.20 and a low at 4044.35 points during the day.

As the market tanked, the market-breadth, indicative of the overall health of the market, did not look good, as a host of small-cap and mid-cap stocks succumbed to selling. There were close to seven losers for every gainer on BSE. For 2,312 shares declining on BSE, only 334 rose. Just 27 shares were unchanged. The BSE clocked a turnover of Rs 3266 crore.

There was complete pandemonium in the market, and not even a single member from the 30-member Sensex pack was spared the stick.

Most of the Asian and European markets finished in the red, on selling pressure. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell by 84.25 points (0.41 per cent), at 20,593.41, Taiwan's Taiwan Weighted was down 83.17 points (1.06 per cent), at 7,776.36, Singapore's Straits Times plunged 50.43 points (1.57 per cent), at 3,170.46, while South Korea's Seoul Composite index was down by 13.39 points (0.94 per cent), to 1,414.29.

Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose USD 0.18, to settle at USD 59.89 a barrel by afternoon trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after rising as high as USD 60.80, brokers said.

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