Market slips, sheds 113 points

The market opened in positive territory despite negative Asian indices led by the buying in metal and pharma stocks. However the Sensex came off its high on substantial selling in heavyweight, telecom and capital goods stocks and slipped into the red. After wiping out the early gains of 68 points, the market remained weak throughout the session. The Sensex slipped further in the afternoon on reports of a rise in the inflation rate and touched a low of 12316, down 323 points from the day's high. There was buying at lower levels and the Sensex managed to pare some losses towards the close and end the session at 12430, down 113 points. The Nifty shed 35 points and closed at 3609.

The breadth of the market was negative. Of the 2,611 scrips traded on the BSE, 1,731 stocks declined, 816 stocks advanced and 64 stocks ended unchanged. Except the BSE Oil & Gas Index all the sectoral indices of the BSE ended in negative territory. The BSE CG Index shed 2.60% at 8335. The BSE Bankex, the BSE Teck Index, the BSE CD Index and the BSE PSU Index were down around 1% each.

Reliance Communications triggered a major sell-off in the market and tumbled 3.52% at Rs377. Among the other major losers L&T dropped 3.03% at Rs1,449, Hero Honda declined 3% at Rs648, BHEL lost 2.57% at Rs1,956, Maruti shed 2.25% at Rs779, Gujarat Ambuja slumped 2.22% at Rs104, Cipla slipped 1.65% at Rs224 and ONGC dipped 1.61% at Rs762. ITC, Infosys, HDFC Bank, Reliance Energy, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, and ACC lost around 1% each. However, Tata Motors managed to report gains of 3.25% at Rs749, Ranbaxy added 1.61% at Rs316, Reliance Industries gained 1.25% at Rs1,230, Dr Reddy's advanced 1.07% at Rs682 and Wipro closed with marginal gains at Rs566.

Select capital goods stocks took a heavy beating on the bourses. Triveni Engineering tanked 5.84% at Rs50, Areva fell 4.70% at Rs994 and Kirloskar Brothers lost 4.61% at Rs372.

Over 63.65 lakh Idea Cellular shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Communications (36.54 lakh shares), SAIL (18.48 lakh shares), ITC (17.64 lakh shares) and Parsvanath Developers (15.22 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs152 crore followed by Reliance Communications (Rs138 crore), SBI (Rs78 crore), Idea Cellular (Rs58 crore) and Infosys (Rs57 crore).