Commodity Online
MUMBAI: Metal stocks took the lead in the bearish markets with heavy selling pressure gripped the sectoral BSE Metals index.

The Metals index fell to 10,094 points down by 4.28% in the morning trading session on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The key benchmark index, Sensex fell below 14,000 mark making it to 13773 down by close to 2% in the morning trading session today.



Tata Steel Ltd, Ispat Industries Ltd, JSW Steel Ltd and Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) were among the prominent steel stocks tading in red accompanied by other metal stocks including Sterlite Industries Ltd, Hindalco Industries Ltd, National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) and Hindustan Zinc Ltd.

Tata Steel fell the most by close to 7.5% to Rs.368.55, while Ispat Industries was down by 7%. JSW Steel shed by over 6% to Rs.541.40 and SAIL recorded a fall of over 2% to Rs.143.30 in the morning trades.

Copper mining major, Sterlite Industries shed by over 6.5% to Rs.556.90 while Birla group major, Hindalco Industries Ltd shed by over 3.5% to Rs.75.30. Hindustan Zinc Ltd was trading at Rs.550 with a loss of over 3%, while NALCO was trading at Rs.284 down by 2.28% on the BSE.

According to experts, the reports of a second US government stimulus plan revived concerns of a delaying global economic recovery, hurting industrial demand for the metal.

Meanwhile, steel makers' persistent demand for increasing import duty on the alloy was not met in the Union Budget 2009-2010 presented by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday, 6 July 2009. The hike in import duty was required to safeguard the domestic industry from dumping of the alloy into the country. However, with Finance Minister failing to address this issue there seem to be receding interests of investors in the steel stocks, leading it to a heavy selling.

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