NEW DELHI: Domestic equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty suffered losses for the third consecutive session on Friday on heavy losses in most sectors, led by auto, metals, pharma and power stocks.
After opening in the green zone, the Sensex traded on the choppy note, swinging between gains and losses, and finally lost steam in late afternoon trade.
During the day, the Sensex swung in a range of 566 points, eventually settling at 36,227, down 97 points or 0.27 per cent.NSEs Nifty50 finished 47 points, or 0.43 per cent, down at 10,930.
Axis Bank, HDFC twins, ITC, Wipro and ONGC settled were the top gainers in the Sensex index.
Among other index stocks, YES Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel and Vedanta suffered major losses and finished at the bottom.
On a weekly basis, Sensex logged the fourth consecutive loss, erasing 614 points, or 1.67 per cent.
The Nifty50 lost 213 points, or 1.91 per cent, for the week.
Both the equity indices plunged over 6 per cent in September.
While Sensex lost 2,418 points, or 6.26 per cent, Nifty plunged 750 points, or 6.42 per cent.
Lets walk you through the highlights of Friday's session: 600 stocks at 52-week lowsAs many as 598 stocks hit 52-week lows on NSE.
They included YES Bank, Maruti Suzuki, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Motors and Punjab National Bank, Apollo Tyres, Vodafone Idea, IDFC, Jet Airways (India), Arvind, Bank of Baroda, BEML, CanFin Homes, Ceat and Castrol India.
Only nine stocks, including Monnet Ispat Energy, Gangotri Textiles, Ircon International, Prakash Steelage, Ruchi Infrastructure and United Breweries, touched 52-week high levels.
Ircon Internationals tepid debutIrcon International made a tepid debut, as the scrip got listed at Rs 410.30 on BSE, a 13.62 per cent discount to the issue price of Rs 475, mostly because of weak market sentiment.
The scrip closed the day at Rs 416 on BSE, down 12.28 per cent from issue price.
YES Bank tanks 10%After touching fresh 52-week low of Rs 166.15, shares of YES Bank settled 9.72 per cent down at Rs 183.45 on BSE.
The stock has eroded over 40 per cent investor wealth in a week.
The scrip extended losses on Friday after reports that Madhu Kapur, wife of late Yes Bank co-founder Ashok Kapur, sold around 0.04 per cent of her stake in the bank in open market on September 21.
The lender clarified to stock exchanges on Thursday that it had not indulged in any window dressing of its corporate accounts to conceal non-performing assets (NPAs).
Infibeam Avenues crashes 70%The stock suffered a terrible fall, closing the day at Rs 58.80, down by 70.24 per cent on BSE.
The crash came a day ahead of the companys scheduled annual general meeting (AGM) on Saturday.
Data suggests a 50 per cent drop on the counter was not unusual.
The scrip had dropped 23 per cent last Friday when it had an intraday swing (between high and low points) of 73 per cent.
On Monday, it swung in a 22 per cent range.
On December 29, the scrip had swung some 66 per cent.
We have seen such wild swings on the counter on intraday basis many a time in the past, said Mazhar Mohammad of Chartviewindia.in.
Midcaps, smallcaps underperformed SensexThe BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices suffered more losses than the benchmark Sensex.
While the midcap index closed 1.61 per cent lower, the smallcap index suffered a major loss of 3.41 per cent.
Metals, realty, telecom top sectoral laggardsMetal, realty and telecom plunged 5.01 per cent, 4.85 per cent and 4.01 per cent, respectively, featuring as the top laggards among the sectoral indices on BSE.
BSE Basic Materials (down 3.31 per cent), Capital Goods (down 2.67 per cent), Industrials (down 2.56 per cent) and Auto (down 2.32 per cent) indices tanked in that order.
Bearish signals on 33 stocksMomentum indicator moving average convergence divergence, or MACD, showed bearish crossovers on 33 counters on NSE.
Among the stocks that showed bearish crossovers included Hindalco, Bajaj Hindusthan Sugar, Divi's Labs, EID Parry and Den Networks.
On the flip side, 11 stocks, including HDFC Bank, Asian Paints, Thermax and Kalpataru Power, showed bullish crossovers on NSE.