From Manic Monday to Black Friday there has been no let up to the woes on the Indian bourses. It’s been one downhill slide during the four-day trading week, with only Wednesday turning against the tide seeing the Sensex scale the ladder, while Thursday came as a welcome respite due to the Shivrathri holiday.
With investor sentiments at its nadir right through the week, thanks to the weak global cues, domestic political concerns, besides pressure on banks to waive loans and reduce borrowing costs as the economy slows, trading turned dampener on Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange. The surge in inflation, on Friday, to a ten-month high, only made the milieu worse and provided the perfect recipe for Sensex to come crashing down and end below sub-16k level.
Sectoral indices
As a result BSE’s popular 30-share Sensex tumbled down 566.56 points (567 points) or 3.42 per cent to close at 15,975.52 points.  Incidentally, it had shaved off 852.16 points at the session’s low of 15,689.92, in the course of the afternoon trade. 
The BSE barometer closed below this level for the first time since September 18 last year. The Sensex had lost 901 points on Monday and 338 points on Tuesday while recovering 202 points on Wednesday.  The broader CNX S&P Nifty was down 149.80 points or 3.04 per cent at 4771.60 points. Further, to make matters worse for Dalal Street, even all the sectoral indices on Bombay Stock Exchange were in the red. BSE during the day clocked a turnover of Rs 5599 crore as against Rs 5,363.43 crore on Wednesday, March 5, 2008. The Asian indices also fell in the range of 1.26 per cent to 3.6 per cent. Marketmen said investors resorted to across-the-board sell-off in the absence of any positive trigger for the market as well as a slowdown in FII activity so far in the year.
Bearishness to stay
Both the key indices have crossed the crucial 50 week moving averages and the Nifty has fallen below 4,803, a strong indication of a bear phase for the markets, analysts said. They opined that the markets are unlikely to come out of this phase unless the global sentiment is improved and Foreign Institutional Investors made fund allocations for the year.
The Sensex has broken the 16,175-support and could get support at 15,700, they added. The mid-cap and the small-cap indices plunged by 309.79 points or 4.35 per cent and 400.61 points or 4.55 per cent to 6,804.39 and 8,409.18 respectively. The market breadth was extremely negative as 2,384 shares registered losses against 295 gainers on the BSE.
The trading volume spurted to Rs 6,272.94 crore from Rs 5,363.43 crore on Wednesday. The broad-based BSE-100 index tumbled by 326.03 points or 3.72 per cent to 8,448.68 from previous close of 8,774.71. The BSE-200 index and the Dollex-200 were quoted lower at 1,988.14 and 815.78 at close compared to last close of 2,066.52 and 852.63 respectively.