Sensex's biggest falls

Mirroring the weak trend in the global markets, the Sensex opened with a negative gap of 207 points at 15,344. Unabated across-the-board selling saw the index tumble to 14,911. The Sensex finally ended with a hefty loss of 615 points (3.96%) at 14,936. This is the third-biggest loss for the index in absolute terms.
 

FIVE BIG FALLs...
Date	Close	Prv Cls	Chg	% Chg
18-May-06	11391.43	12217.81	-826.38	-6.76
02-Apr-06	12455.37	13072.10	-616.73	-4.72
01-Aug-07	14935.77	15550.99	-615.22	-3.96
17-May-04	4505.16	5069.87	-564.71	-11.14
27-Jul-07	15776.31	15234.6	-541.74	-3.43

Elsewhere in Aisa, Hong Kong's Hang Seng slumped 730 points to 22,455. Japan's Nikkei plunged 378 points to 16,871. Taiwan's Taiwan Weighted index crashed 395 points to 8892, and China's Shanghai Composite index shed 170 points at 4301.

The BSE Realty index plunged over 6% to 7333. The Metal and Capital Goods indices dropped nearly 5% each to 11,071 and 12,697, respectively. The Auto, Bankex, FMCG, Healthcare, IT and Oil & Gas indices slipped 2-4% each.

The market breadth was very bearish with almost 80% stocks traded on the BSE ending with losses. Out of 2,646 stocks traded, 2,114 declined, 493 advanced and 39 were unchanged on Wednesday.

It should be mentioned here that frantic selling by funds had driven the Sensex down by 542 points (3.43%) at 15,234. The NSE Nifty ended at 4,442, down 178 points.

Marketmen had blamed the crash to selling by foreign and domestic funds sparked by report of a major plunge in global stock markets like Nasdaq, Dow Jones Industrial, Nikkei and Hang Seng.

Also read: Sensex's biggest slides through history