Mirroring weak trend in the global market the Sensex opened with a negative gap of 207 points at 15,344, and went on to slide deeper into red. Unabated selling across-the-board saw the index tumble to a low of 14,911.

The Sensex finally ended with a hefty loss of 645 points at 14,936. The NSE Nifty ended at 4,346, down 183 points. This is the third biggest loss in absolute terms for the index.

Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng slumped 730 points to 22,455. Japan's Nikkei plunged 378 points to 16,871. Taiwan's Taiwan Weighted index crashed 395 points to 8892, and China's Shanghai Composite index shed 170 points at 4,301.

The BSE Realty index plunged over 6% to 7333. The Metal and Capital Goods indices dropped nearly 5% each to 11,071 and 12,697, respectively. The Auto, Bankex, FMCG, Healthcare, IT and Oil & Gas indices slipped 2-4% each.

The market breadth was very bearish with almost 80% stocks traded on the BSE ending with losses. Out of 2,646 stocks traded, 2,114 declined, 493 advanced and 39 were unchanged on Wednesday.

Index Shakers

There was not a single gainer among the index stocks on Wednesday.

ACC plunged nearly 9% to Rs 966. Reliance Energy [Get Quote] slumped 7% to Rs 737, and Hindalco [Get Quote] shed over 6% at Rs 159.

Ranbaxy [Get Quote] dropped nearly 6% to Rs 368. Reliance Communications [Get Quote], Tata Steel [Get Quote], Reliance and Mahindra and Mahindra tumbled 5% each to Rs 531, Rs 622, Rs 1,798 and Rs 694, respectively.

SBI [Get Quote], Larsen and Toubro and Tata Motors [Get Quote] slipped 4.7% each to Rs 1,548, Rs 2,485 and Rs 667, respectively.

Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] declined 4.5% to Rs 863. Wipro [Get Quote] and BHEL dropped 4% each to Rs 476 and Rs 1,663, respectively.

ICICI Bank [Get Quote], HDFC [Get Quote], Grasim [Get Quote] and TCS [Get Quote] shed nearly 4% each to Rs 891, Rs 1,941, Rs 2,849 and Rs 1,116, respectively.

Value and Volume Toppers

Debutant Everonn Systems topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 367.50 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 290 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs 203.30 crore), SBI (Rs 170 crore) and Reliance Communications (Rs 161.40 crore).

Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] led the volume chart with trades of around 1.36 crore shares followed by IFCI (1.09 crore), Everonn Systems (71.78 lakh), Industrial Investment (54.50 lakh) and Bellary Steel (54 lakh).