Market ends flat

The market staged a smart recovery towards the close and ended flat after a sharp slump during intra-day trades saw the index drop nearly 229 points. The market was extremely choppy in early trades. After shedding nearly 40 points initially, the Sensex continued to be in the red and touched an intra-day low of 13200. However the market erases its losses amid selective buying in heavyweight, IT and tech stocks towards the close, and lifted the index to an intra-day high of 13463. The Sensex finally closed the session at 13431, up one point, while the Nifty gained three points to close at 3856.

The breadth of the market, however, was slightly weak with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of 1:0.58. Of the 2,530 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,557 stocks declined, 910 stocks advanced and 86 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Metal index shed by 2.33% at 8585 while the BSE Bankex, the BSE CG index and the BSE HC index were down around 1% each. The BSE FMCG index, the BSE PSU index and the BSE Oil & Gas index ended with steady losses. However, the BSE TECk index and the BSE IT index gained nearly 2% each.

ACC dropped 3.75% at Rs1,056, HDFC Bank declined 3.52% at Rs1,086, Tata Steel lost 2.64% at Rs463, NTPC shed 2.45% at Rs136, Ranbaxy moved down by 2.18% at Rs382 and Maruti was down 2.14% at Rs870. Hindalco, L&T, ITC, ICICI Bank, Gujarat Ambuja Cements, Dr Reddy's, Cipla, SBI, Tata Motors and BHEL were down 1-2% each. ONGC, Grasim and RIL ended the day in the red. However, Bharti Airtel advanced by 3.98% at Rs604, HDFC jumped 3.58% at Rs1,665, Infosys rose 3.06% at Rs2,253, Reliance Communication added 2.39% at Rs409, TCS gained 2.01% at Rs1,114 and Hero Honda was up 1.81% at Rs706.

Over 38.92 lakh Deccan Aviation shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Development Credit Bank (35.25 lakh shares), IL&FS Investmart (34.64 lakh shares), Balrampur Chini Mills (33.07 lakh shares) and Hanung Toys (32.88 lakh shares).

Value-wise Mahindra Gesco registered a turnover of Rs256.28 crore on the BSE followed by Tech Mahindra (Rs135.32 crore), India Bulls (Rs99.57 crore), RIL (Rs99.54 crore) and Hindustan Zinc (Rs87.68 crore).