Bull in the BSE

Bombay Stock Exchange displaying the stock prices

MUMBAI: Selling by speculators rather than institutional players led to a 2% fall in the sensex and nifty on Tuesday with several of the frontline stocks crashing.Institutional dealers said there was not much of fund selling. On the other hand speculators with leveraged positions, to cut their losses, sold as the market slid through the day, dealers said.Sensex closed 518 points lower at 25,582.11 while the nifty on NSE closed 164 points lower at 7,623. These were the biggest single session loss for the sensex in the last 10 months.During the day the railway minister presented the Railway Budget with the main focus areas being improving passenger amenities and use of technology. Since there was not much in the Railway Budget that could bring in immediate gains for the companies catering to the Indian Railways, most of the railway stocks closed in the red.There too speculators had built positions in anticipation of a very positive Railway Budget and hence the selling, dealers said.In the overall market, the late sell-off came after the sensex and nifty hit new all-time highs in the morning session, with the nifty crossing the 7,800 mark for the first time and sensex scaling a record peak at 26,190. At the day’s low, the sensex had lost about 700 points from its all-time peak early in the session.The sell-off was more severe in the midcap and smallcap stocks. As a result the BSe midcap index lost 3.6% while the smallcap index was down 4.2%.Among the top sensex laggards were BHEL, down 8.2% at Rs 243, NTPC, down 5.4% at Rs 153 and Tata Power, down 5% at Rs 105. All but two sensex stocks out of its 30 constituents closed in the red.