Sensex ends 283 pts down on profit taking; SBI, DLF fall 8%

The market on Wenesday saw its biggest fall in the last 16 sessions led by heavy sell-off in banks, metals, telecom and infrastructure stocks. Weak European cues after less-than-expected German's PMI and jobs data too dented the market's sentiment in last hour of trade.

The NSE benchmark fell below the 5500 level before closing down 101.80 points or 1.82% at 5,505.35. Meanwhile, the BSE benchmark Sensex dropped 283.36 points or 1.54% to 18,145.25.

Experts feel profit booking may be one of the reasons behind today's fall as the Nifty had rallied more than 500 points since the previous biggest correction of 117.4 points to close at 5087.3 on January 30, 2012. The rally was completely liquidity driven as foreign institutional investors have been pumping in more and more money in emerging markets (they bought over USD 4.5 billion worth of shares since January) and not because of any great change in fundamentals, experts assert.

Anish Damania, business head of institutional equities at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd believes that the downward cycle for the market is not over and the valuation cycle with respect to interest rates is way ahead. Therefore, the market has to correct to a large extent of the entire rise over the next six months.

Damania has advised investors to book profits in infrastructure, banking and financial stocks where there has been a massive rally.

European markets like France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were down 0.4-0.9% after German's weak economic data. February Flash Manufacturing PMI came in at 50.1 while forecast was 51.5 and in January it was at 51. German's Flash Composite PMI Jobs Index was weakest since March 2010, which came in at 51.7 in February as against 52.9 in January.

Back home, all sectoral indices ended in the red barring IT. The BSE Realty Index hit quite badly, falling 6.8%. Metal, Power and Bank indices were down around 4% while IT Index rose 0.45%.

Shares of country's largest lender SBI got slaughtered heavily, falling 8% on asset quality concerns post rumours that the bank may lend some money to debt laden Kingfisher Airlines. ICICI Bank tanked 3.4% and Axis Bank was down 5.5%. HDFC declined 2% while HDFC Bank flat with positive bias.

Metals stocks lost their shine; Sesa Goa dropped 4% after sources reclaimed that I-T Dept disallowed Rs 246 crore tax deductions of the company. Tata Steel, Jindal Steel, Sterlite and Hindalco were down 4-6.6%.

Index heavyweights Reliance Industries and L&T went down 1-1.5%; Bharti Airtel tumbled over 3%.

Power related stocks like BHEL and Tata Power fell over 3.5%. Shares of major realty firm DLF tanked nearly 8%.

However, ITC, Infosys, ITC and Sun Pharma bucked the trend, rising 0.5-1.5%.

The broader markets too caught in bears' grip - the BSE Midcap Index was down 3.5% and Smallcap down 3.2%. About three shares declined for every share rising on the BSE.

In the second line shares, Indiabulls Power, DB Realty, IRB Infrastructure, GMR Infrastructure, Adani Power and Voltas were down 8-12%. Lanco Infratech plunged 17%. Syndicate Bank and Vijaya Bank fell 8%.

Volume was highest among last few sessions - total traded turnover was more than 2.87 lakh crore.