Market dips marginally on late selling

After posting gains of over 100 points in the first half, the market steadily declined from its early highs and wilted under selling pressure at close. The market, however, was extremely buoyant in early trades as the Sensex after opening 33 points above its last close at 13893 surpassed 13900 to touch an intra-day high of 13960. While selective selling pared gains by mid-noon trades, the Sensex eventually slipped below in late noon trades on extended correction and touched the day's low of 13820. The Sensex finally ended with a small loss of 13 points at 13846, while the Nifty virtually ended flat at 3971.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,707 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,392 stocks declined, 1,248 stocks declined and 67 stocks ended unchanged. The sectoral indices displayed mixed trend on the BSE.

Dragging the market from higher levels Cipla tumbled 2.43% at Rs253. Reliance dropped 1.25% at Rs1,277, SBI shed 1.18% at Rs1,236 and Tata Steel lost 1% at Rs477. Dr Reddy’s, NTPC, BHEL, Reliance Energy, L&T, Bajaj Auto, Ranbaxy, Satyam Computers and Maruti were down around 1% each. HDFC Bank, however, bucked the downtrend and advanced 2.09% at Rs1,079. Hero Honda gained 1.98% at Rs759, Gujarat Ambuja soared 1.20% at Rs144 and TCS gained 1.12% at Rs1,209 respectively.

Select health care stocks witnessed selling pressure. Sterling Biotech dropped 3.05% at Rs191, Novartis lost 2.45% at Rs357, Cipla declined 2.43% at Rs253, Matrix Labs moved down by 2.38% at Rs207 and Torrent Pharmaceuticals was down 2.32% at Rs204.

Over 27.61 lakh shares of Reliance Communication traded on the BSE followed by HCL Techno (21.17 lakh shares), Sterling Biotech (16.17 lakh shares), Reliance (13.20 lakh shares), Century Textiles (11.44 lakh shares ) and Parsvnath (10.68 lakh shares).