Sensex slips below 15k in early trade

The Bombay Stock Exchange (^BSESN : 16632.01 -222.92) benchmark Sensex fell by almost 197 points in opening trade on selling by foreign funds and retail investors, tracking weak global markets.

The 30-share index moved down by 196.58 points, or 1.21 per cent to 14,878.01 points in opening trade after stocks of auto, metals and realty sectors suffered the most.

Similarly, the Nifty (^NSEI : 4941.75 -63.8) index on the wide-based National Stock Exchange fell by 62.60 points, or 1.39 per cent at 4,408.75. All the sectoral indices dipped with losses up to 1.68 per cent.

Brokers said selling pressure gathered momentum on the domestic bourses in tandem with weakness on the US markets and similar trends in morning trade on other Asian bourses.

In the auto sector, Mahindra and Mahindra was down by 2.13 per cent at Rs 768.25, Maruti Suzuki 0.61 per cent at Rs 1,284 and Tata Motors (TATAMOTORS.BO : 634.85 -8.85) 1.41 per cent at Rs 422.20.

Among metal stocks, Sterlite Industries, non-ferrous metals producer, traded 2.52 per cent lower at Rs 619, Hindalco (HINDALC0.NS : 142 0) lost 1.56 per cent at Rs 103.80 and Tata Steel (TATASTL.BO : 544.9 +1.45) down 1.67 per cent at Rs 455.40.

Other losers were Reliance Industries (RELIANCE.NS : 1045.95 -17.8) down by 0.65 per cent to Rs 1,986.45, Infosys Technologies (INFOSYS.BO : 2328.3 -58.55) by 1.42 per cent to Rs 2,052 and Rcom (RCOM.NS : 166.6 -1.5) by 2.03 per cent at Rs 248.55.

The US markets ended almost 1.25 per cent down on Tuesday, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index plunged 2.4 per cent and Japan's Nikkei shed 1.2 per cent in the morning trade on Wednesday.