Sensex tanks over 350 points; Nifty below 7,500

Zee Media Bureau

Mumbai: Indian stock market opened sharply lower on Thursday as the investor mood continued to be affected by both global cues and the poor macro-economic numbers emerging from the domestic economy.

The BSE Sensex opened at 24,606.20 points and soon slid to 24,473.22 points. Sensex is currently down by 363.27 points at 24,490.84 while the broad based Nifty was down 111.45 points or 1.47 percent at 7451.75.

Among 30 Sensex scrips, 28 were in negative zone with Tata Steel plunging the most by 5.49 percent to Rs 233.45.

Other major losers that dragged down the key indices included Tata Motors, Axis Bank, BHEL, L&T, M&M, SBI, ONGC, ICICI Bank, sian Paint, GAIL, Coal Inda, NTPC and Bharti Airtel.

In the Asia-Pacific region, too, all major indices were ruling sharply lower, taking a cue from the US, as also concerns over the global economy and the continuing fall in crude il prices.

US crude prices were were last down slightly at $30.47 a barrel, not far from Tuesday`s nadir of $29.93, which was their lowest level since December 2003.

Global benchmark Brent tumbled 1.2 percent to $29.94, after marking fresh 12-year lows.

With Agency Inputs