The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex ended the session on Thursday with a steep fall over 300 points due to heavy selling in IT, bank, tech and consumer durables stocks amid firm Asian markets and flat European markets.
Easing of food inflation to 16.91 per cent for the week-ended January 1, 2011 failed to revive the market sentiment.
IT stocks were hit after the industry bellwether Infosys Technologies posted third quarter earnings lower than the market expectations.
At 3.30 p.m., the Sensex was down 344.61 points at 19,189.49 and the Nifty was down 106.4 points at 5,756.85.
Volume toppers during the session were ICICI Bank, Infosys, SBI, Tata Steel and RIL. Major Sensex losers were Infosys, ICICI Bank, SBI, HDFC Bank, RIL, HDFC and Tata Steel. ITC, Tata Motors and ONGC were the major gainers.
Among the sectoral indices, IT was down 3.53%, bankex 3.3%, consumer durables 2.64% and teck 2.83%. Only realty index was up 0.5%. Of the total 2,981 stocks traded, 1,268 advanced, 1,438 declined and 275 remained unchanged.