The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 156 points at 12,900 on the back of negative cues from the global market. The index tried to recover but could only manage to touch a high of 13,001.

Relentless selling in metal and oil & gas stocks saw the index slide as the day progressed. Banking, capital goods and technology stocks were also very weak today. The index tumbled to a low of 12,473 at the fag end of the day.

The Sensex finally settled with a huge loss of 529 points (4%) at 12,526. In the process, the index shed 576 points (4.4%) for the week, and is down a whopping 1,516 points (10.8%) in the last two trading weeks.

The BSE Metal index cracked 7% (635 points) to 8,417, and the Oil & Gas index plunged 5.7% (513 points) to 8,427. The Bankex dropped nearly 4% (259 points) to 6,429, and the IT index shed 3.3% (108 points) at 3,110.

The market breadth was fairly negative - out of 2,644 stocks traded, 1,923 declined, 670 advanced and 51 were unchanged today.

Index shakers...

Tata Steel [Get Quote] slumped over 10% to Rs 394. ICICI Bank [Get Quote] tanked 8.5% to Rs 505.

Sterlite and Reliance tumbled nearly 8% each to Rs 396 and Rs 1,761, respectively.

Tata Power [Get Quote] crashed over 6% to Rs 889. HDFC [Get Quote] shed 5.5% at Rs 2,082.

Reliance Infrastructure dropped over 5% to Rs 741. Larsen & Toubro, Infosys [Get Quote] and Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] were down around 4.5% each at Rs 1,158, Rs 1,391 and Rs 756, respectively.

Reliance Communications [Get Quote] slipped 3% to Rs 333. DLF, Tata Motors [Get Quote], Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote] declined around 2.5% each to Rs 336, Rs 331, Rs 116 and Rs 341, respectively.

ONGC [Get Quote] and TCS [Get Quote] dropped over 2% each to Rs 1,020 and Rs 657, respectively.

Maruti [Get Quote], Satyam [Get Quote], HDFC Bank, BHEL and SBI [Get Quote] were down around 1.5% each.

...and the movers

Ranbaxy [Get Quote] surged nearly 5% to Rs 264. Mahindra & Mahindra moved up 1.7% to Rs 515.

Hindustan Unilever was the only other gainer among the index stocks.

Value & volume toppers

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 649 crore followed by Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 313.20 crore), Bharti Airtel (Rs 234.50 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 207.30 crore) and Axis Bank (Rs 181.20 crore).

Cals Refineries led the volume chart with trades of around 1.24 crore shares followed by Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (1.04 crore), IFCI (67.50 lakh), Chambal Fertilisers (51 lakh) and Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (49.20 lakh).