Bears badly mauled the stock markets with fears of poor financial results by top companies hitting the sentiment on Thursday. Led by heavyweights like Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), stocks reeled under intense selling pressure, pushing the benchmark Sensex down to a 52-week low of 2908.05 on BSE.Investors targeted select key stocks with a high weightage in the index and hammered down the prices in a bid to bring the Sensex down, brokers said. Sensex has lost over 100 points in the last four sessions due to sustained selling pressure. The previous 52-week low was 2916.38 hit on October 4, 2001Indicating the bearish trend, Sensex which opened weak at 2944.28, gradually moved downwards to the intra-day low of 2906.20 before ending at 2908.05 as against yesterday’s close of 2948.96, netting a fall of 40.91 points or 1.39 per cent. The broad-based BSE-100 Index dropped by 15.49 points to 1449.16 from the previous close of 1464.65.Attributing heavy sell-off by speculators and profit-booking by some domestic funds to anticipation of discouraging working results by market leader HLL, market sources said announcements of encouraging results by others like ITC and UTI Bank failed to stem the rot. Brokers anticipate HLL results to be below the market expectations ahead of its board meeting on Friday, in view of unfavourable monsoon in many parts of the country this year. Telecom PSU MTNL touched its 52-week low by registering a sharp fall of Rs 6.80 to Rs 95 over the previous close, dealers said. “This stock was falling ever since the government proposed a merger of MTNL with BSNL. If the merger takes place, public holding in the merged entity will fall below 10 per cent and the stock may be delisted,” said a dealer.CMC plunges 20 per cent: Software and computer maintenance firm CMC Ltd — which was acquired by the Tatas from the government — dropped as much as 20 per cent to Rs 427.60 from Rs 534.45 after its September quarter profits declined. VSNL, another company acquired by the Tatas from the government, had recently hit the 52-week low.
