Market slips marginally on late selling

The market witnessed selling pressure towards the close, after an early rally had seen the Sensex notch up gains of 114 points on sustained buying support. The Sensex began the day with gains of 22 points at 13209 on the back of firm Asian indices and surged above the 13300 level to touch a new intra-day high of 13301. The Sensex held firm above 13200 amid a range-bound trend for the better part of the trading session before the resumption of selling dragged it to the day's low of 13135. The Sensex ended the session with losses of 30 points at 13157, while the Nifty was down ten points at 3799. However, the other Asian indices like the Nikkei, the Hang Seng, the Kospi and the Straits Times closed with marginal gains.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,601 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,134 stocks advanced, 1,387 stocks declined and 80 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral front, the BSE CD index rose 1.46% at 3319 while the BSE FMCG index dipped 1.04% at 6266.

Among the losers, Bajaj Auto shed 2.63% at Rs2,722, Hero Honda dropped 2.35% at Rs743, Tata Steel lost 1.72% at Rs497, NTPC tumbled by 1.69% at Rs131, BHEL was down 1.65% at Rs2,430 and REL declined 1.55% at 507. ACC, L&T, RIL, Maruti and ITC were down around 1% each. Satyam, Grasim, Ranbaxy, Reliance Communication, ONGC, SBI, Wipro, HDFC Bank and Bharti Airtel ended the day in the red. However, HDFC rose 2.18% at Rs1,560, Gujarat Ambuja jumped 2.07% at Rs131, Dr Reddy's added 2.04% at Rs792, Hindalco gained 1.82% at Rs191 and Infosys moved up by 1.54% at Rs2,102. Cipla, Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, TCS and HLL ended with marginal gains.

Over 1.22 crore Development Credit Bank shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (98.82 lakh shares), Himachal Futuristic (93.10 lakh shares), Welspun Gujarat (47.92 lakh shares) and GE Shipping (44.33 lakh shares).

Value-wise Hindustan Zinc registered a turnover of Rs227.10 crore on the BSE followed by GE Shipping (Rs152.32 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs134.10 crore), Jaiprakash Associates (Rs107.07 crore) and IVRCL Infrastructure (Rs91.88 crore).