The markets are trading extremely weak with deep cut on the back of heavy selling witnessed across the sectors in the early trade today. This has been mainly triggered by the weak cues from the global markets as US mkts ended in red on account of credit concern leading to the decline in the Asian peers.

Market breadth has been extremely weak since opening today. On NSE around 152 stocks were on the advancing side and over 956 stocks were on the decline side. Rupee was quoting at 39.33 against a US dollar. Yen has further appreciated and was trading at 109.96 against a USD.

At 11.10 hrs IST, the Sensex is down 446.14 points or 2.36% at 18461.46, and the Nifty down 135.50 points or 2.39% at 5527.75. About 974 shares have advanced, 2011 shares declined, and 80 shares are unchanged.

Top gainers on the Sensex are ITC at Rs 172.15 up 1.92%, Satyam at Rs 432.45 up 1.29% and HUL at Rs 195 up 0.91%.

Top losers on the Sensex are Reliance Comm at Rs 674.45 down 4.95%, BHEL at Rs 2,650 down 4.49% and Hindalco at Rs 193.20 down 4.45%.

Top gainers on the Nifty are ITC at Rs 172 up 1.90%, Satyam at Rs 431.75 up 1.23% and HUL at Rs 195.05 up 0.96%.

Top losers on the Nifty are Sterlite Ind at Rs 907 down 8.24%, Hindalco at Rs 191.50 down 5.43% and Tata Power at Rs 1,152 down 5.07%.

Most active shares on NSE are Reliance at Rs 2,616 with 718,207 shares, Reliance Natural at Rs 140.15 with 12,275,766 shares and Reliance Petroleum at Rs 213.65 with 7,861,974 shares.

Mkt open with huge gap down on weak global cues

The markets opened with huge cut today in line with its global peers. Asian markets plummeted along with US markets as credit worries persist in the US economy.

At 9:56 am, Sensex was down 448 points at 18459 and Nifty was down 142 points at 5520. Major losers in the opening trade were Rel Energy, Rel Petroleum, RIL, Sterlite, SAIL, BHEL, Hindalco, ICICI Bank.

Asian markets were trading weak. Hong Kong's Hang Seng plunged 3.06% or 881.85 points at 27,901.56, Japan's Nikkei fell 2.4% or 374.64 points at 15,208.78, Taiwan's Taiwan Weighted tumbled 2.91% or 260.80 points at 8,710.12, Singapore's Straits Times declined 2.72% or 97.85 points at 3,501.82 and South Korea's Seoul Composite was down 3.04% or 60.54 points at 1,929.93.

Market cues:

* All global markets weak on US cues
* First negative closing for benchmark indices on Mahurat trading in 9 years
* NSE F&O Open Interest down by Rs 242 crore on Diwali day at Rs 92,769 crore