The Sensex opened a tad higher at 10,728, and inched up to touch a high of 10,741. Selling pressure on account of weak global markets and an overnight terror attack in Varanasi saw the index slip into negative zone only to bounce back soon.
Panic selling in the noon session following the release of derivative trade details of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) for Tuesday saw the index take a sharp dip to a low of 10,498 - a drop of 243 points from the high.
The index tried hard to recover, but could only manage to touch 10,648 - up 150 points from the low.
A fresh round of selling saw the index plunge to the day's low of 10,494 resulting in an intra-day swing of almost 550 points. The swing witnessed today is the highest-ever witnessed after Manic Monday - May 17, 2004 - when trading was frozen for half-an-hour during the day.
The Sensex finally ended today with a huge loss of 2% (217 points) at 10,509.
FIIs sold index futures to the tune of Rs 1,488 crore, and were also net sellers of stock futures worth Rs 395 crore on Tuesday.
The BSE Metal Index slumped 4.3% to 7539. The FMCG Index plunged 2.8% to 1989. The Bankex, Auto and Oil & Gas indices also finished with huge losses of nearly 2% each at 5152, 5241 and 4461, respectively.
The market breadth was extremely bearish. Out of 2,609 stocks traded, 1,633 declined, 899 advanced and 77 were unchanged today.
Tata Steel plunged over 5% to Rs 444, and Hindalco slumped 4.8% to Rs 159.
HLL shed 4% to Rs 242. HDFC and Maruti dropped nearly 4% each to Rs 1,293 and Rs 883, respectively.
Tata Motors tumbled 3.5% to Rs 880. Wipro slipped 2.8% to Rs 508, and Bharti Tele declined 2.7% to Rs 392.
ITC (Rs 173), NTPC (Rs 134), Ranbaxy (Rs 432), ONGC (Rs 1,134), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 2,439), ACC (Rs 714) and BHEL (Rs 2,093) finished with a loss of over 2%
