Market ends flat

The market saw an impressive pull-back in line with its Asian peers in the morning trades. After yesterday's massacre, the market resumed on a very strong note with a gap of 126 points at 12656. The recovery was led by the information technology and banking stocks, which had taken heavy beating yesterday but gained over 2% today. While the action in several counters held the market firm above the 12650 levels in the first half of the trading session, the index notched up further gains in the afternoon to touch the day's high of 12790. However, the index eased on profit taking and the weakness in select heavyweight, auto and banking stocks dragged the index down to touch an intra-day low of 12510 towards the close. Finally, the Sensex ended the session at 12544 with gains of 14 points, while the Nifty added two points to close at 3639.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,631 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,472 stocks advanced, 1091 stocks declined and 68 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE IT index rose by 1.88% followed by the BSE FMCG index (up 1.74%), the BSE Metal index (up 1.34%) and the BSE Teck index (up 1.02%) while the BSE Bankex index slipped 1.23%.

Heavyweights led the upsurge in the market. Among the other major gainers Dr Reddy's shot up by 4.43% at Rs675, ITC increased by 3.15% at Rs147, Infosys moved up by 2.93% at Rs2,078, Hindalco jumped 2.11% at Rs131, TCS gained 1.87% at Rs1,236 and NTPC moved up by 1.19% at Rs141. Select counters, however, finished on a weak note. SBI shed 2.70% at Rs922, HDFC dropped 2.67% at Rs1514, Tata Motors declined by 2.59% at Rs726 and ACC lost 2.13% at Rs732.

IT scrips rallied sharply. Mphasis surged by 2.44% at Rs279, Tech Mahindra jumped by 1.37% at Rs1,454 and I-flex Solutions added 1.20% at Rs1,850. The banking stocks bore the brunt of the bears today. Canara Bank lost 3.76% at Rs183, SBI tumbled 2.70% at Rs922, BOI slipped 2.11% at Rs137, UTI Bank was down 1.83% at Rs469 and Bank of Baroda dipped 1.68% at Rs196.

Volume-wise, over 1.48 crore Idea Cellular shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Communication (30.88 lakh shares), India Cements (28.90 lakh shares), ITC (20.68 lakh shares) and Parsvanath Developers (18.04 lakh shares).

Value-wise, Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs148 crore on the BSE followed by Idea Cellular (Rs136 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs123 crore), Infosys (Rs74 crore) and Satyam (Rs74 crore).