Mkts in red, Sensex falls below 10,100

Mumbai: The markets cracked further breaking some important psychological support levels in today's trade despite some stable global cues and some good corporate earnings.

The Sensex, which opened with a positive gap of over 170 points, saw a sharp fall and breached the 10,000 mark during the day. The Nifty also closed below the 2950 mark.

The Sensex closed at 10,007.34 down 219.44 points. The Nifty lost 61 points to close at 2933.

The worst hit were the midcap and smallcap stocks. The BSE Small Cap Index closed at 4,882.02, down 117 points.

The BSE Midcap Index ended at 4,074.74, down 126 points.

About 465 shares advanced, 1877 shares declined, and 59 shares were unchanged.

There was lot of pressure on companies which came out with earnings, especially Dabur and ACC followed by tech stocks like Wipro and TCS.

All the BSE sectoral indices closed in red with metal, auto and IT being among the top laggards.

Indices highlights:

The BSE Metal Index was down 3.95 per cent at 7,423.22. Sterlite Ind, Sesa Goa, Hind Zinc, Jindal Saw and Welspun Guj witnessed selling pressure.

The Auto index closed at 4,151.09 down 3.6 per cent. M&M, Hind Motors, Bajaj Auto, TVS Motor and Tata Motors closed lower.

The BSE IT Index was down 3.06 per cent at 3,739.11. I-Flex Solution, Mphasis BFL, Wipro, Satyam and TCS moved up.

The BSE Capital Goods Index was down 2.84 per cent at 6,392.45. Gammon India, Greaves Cotton, Thermax, Carborundum and Siemens closed lower.

The BSE Consumer Durables Index lost 2.3 per cent at 2,576.39. Samtel Color, BPL, Blue Star and Su-Raj Diamonds lost ground

The BSE FMCG Index was down 2.01 per cent at 1,853.96. Dabur India, Shaw Wallace, Nestle, Tata Tea and Colgate closed in red.

The BSE Bankex was down 1.38 per cent at 4,051.44. IOB, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Andhra Bank and Bank of Baroda were among the losers.

The BSE Health care index closed down 1.36 per cent at 2,988.09. Novartis India, Ipca Labs, Nicholas Pirama and Wockhardt closed in the negative terrain.

The BSE Oil and Gas Index closed down 1.2 per cent at 4,917.76. IOC, Petronet, Reliance, HPCL and BPCL were among the losers.

The NSE cash turnover was at Rs 5940.26 crore and the NSE F&O turnover was at Rs 24296.49 crore. The BSE cash turnover was Rs 2966.51 crore. Total market wide turnover was at Rs 3,3203.26 crore.