Market slips amid volatility

The market continued to witness strong volatile moves as the key indices kept swinging between positive and negative zones throughout the session. The Sensex began the trading session with a negative gap of 103 points. The market moved into positive territory on substantial buying support that propelled the index to an intra-day high of 13972. The index drifted into the red once again in the afternoon to touch the day's low of 13763. After witnessing an intra-day swing of 209 points the Sensex closed at 13861, down 11 points. The Nifty was down five points at 3983.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,672 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,630 stocks advanced, 998 stocks declined and 44 stocks ended unchanged. In a volatile market, the BSE Oil & Gas index rose 1.30% while the BSE PSU index, the BSE Bankex, the BSE CD index and the BSE Metal index ended with steady gains. However the BSE Auto index shed 1.51%.

Dragging down the market, Reliance Communication shed 3.79% at Rs447, Maruti dipped 3.31% at Rs936, Gujarat Ambuja lost 3.12% at Rs138, Hindalco tumbled 2.17% at Rs171, Dr Reddy’s was down 2.06% at Rs809 and ITC closed weaker by 2.01% at Rs166. L&T, ACC, Tata Motors, Wipro, Reliance Energy, Hero Honda and Bajaj Auto were down 1% each. However, ONGC advanced 2.43% at Rs896 and ICICI Bank was up 2.24% at Rs910. HDFC, Grasim and HLL ended with gains of 1% each.

Over 22.15 lakh ITC shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Welspun Gujarat (20.02 lakh shares), Sobha Developers (17.32 lakh shares), Reliance Capital (14.93 lakh shares) and Sterlite Biotech (12.95 lakh shares).

Sobha Developers was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs185 crore followed by HDFC Bank (Rs139 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs121 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs110 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs86 crore).