Bloodshed on bourses, 13 Sensex stocks touch 52-week lows

Our Markets Bureau

New Delhi, Sept 17: The bloodbath on the bourses continued unabated on Monday as war worries led 13 out of the 30 Sensex heavy-weights to touch their new 52-week lows while four others were looming dangerously close to that level. The offloading was not restricted to the index heavy-weights as 169 out of the 176 A-group stocks closed in the black with only seven stocks showing marginal gains.

Interestingly, while the Sensex Plunged by 5.03 per cent during the day, the broad-based indices — BSE 100, 200 and 500 — saw higher losses, each declining by as much as 6.3 per cent.

FIIs, which hold a substantial chunk of the top trading stocks, have been aggressively pulling out funds from the Indian equity markets.
The foreign funds have to meet their domestic commitments following the enormous destruction in New York last week. Besides, the rupee has again declined against the dollar, touching records lows with each passing day.

The list of Sensex stocks which touched their new 52-week lows includes Infosys Technologies, Reliance Industries and Reliance Petroleum besides others like Glaxo, Hindalco, HPCL, ICICI,
ITC, Mahindra & Mahindra, MTNL, NIIT, Satyam Computer
and Tisco.

Still others like BSES, Colgate, Larsen & Toubro and State Bank were trading close to their yearly lows.

Such was the bloodshed on the bourse that out of the 30 Sensex stocks, only three managed to close with some gains while the rest buckled under heavy selling pressure. Nestle (2.08 per cent), Bajaj Auto (1.26 per cent) and RIL (0.29 per cent) were the only gainers.