Markets down over 2% on profit booking; ITC slumps

Hyderabad: In what could be described as 'Black Monday', the markets witnessed the biggest single day fall in more than a year, with brokers attributing the crash to profit taking after the recent run up. The key equity benchmarks plunged over two per cent. They also said that the signs of recovery of US economy also made the foreign investors fear of US authorities tightening its monetary policy squeezing money from the global liquidity. On Monday, the BSE Sensex closed at 19691.67, down 430 points over the previous close. The Nifty closed at 5980.45, down 127 points over the previous close. The BSE Sensex fell below its psychological level of 20,000mark and the Nifty fell below its psychological level of 6,000mark. According to market analysts, the latest inflation data has showed that the country's trade deficit widened in April 2013 mainly due to higher gold imports. Besides, the weakened European and Asian stocks also added to the market sentiment thus pushing the indices further down. While ITC slumped a record high as investors consider the recent four-week rally as excessive. The scrip topped the list of losers shedding over 5 per cent. It contributed over 30 points to Nifty's fall. Sterlite, GAIL, BHEL, L&T, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel and Tata Steel were the other big losers, falling 3-4 per cent. After a four-week rise of about 10 per cent, on Monday, the market have experienced a huge selling pressure and continued to fall throughout the day without any intraday retracement. It breached all minor supports with ease to close well below psychological levels. According to brokers, the steep fall can be seen as a correction which is overdue for some time, as the rally was quite ahead of fundamentals. All sectoral indices closed in the red led by FMCG, metal, infra, auto, media and realty. It is one of the rare days when all the 50 stocks on Nifty closed in red. The notable losers include ITC, Rel Infra, Bharti, Tata Steel and Tata Motors. F&O stocks Divi's Lab, IDEA, Dr Reddy gained with higher Open Interest suggesting fresh long positions while United Phosphorous, Rel Infra, Adani Enterprises, ITC and Tata Steel declined with higher Open Interest indicating fresh short positions. Put call ratio of Nifty options stood at 1.05.