Sensex sheds 273 points

After yesterday's pullback, the market opened with moderate losses on the back of weak Asian markets. After erasing its early losses the Sensex recovered on sustained buying in metal, cement and consumer durables stocks and touched an intra-day high of 13254. The index firmed up in the afternoon on the gains in banking stocks on reports of a lower inflation rate. However the Sensex soon slipped into the red as selling intensified in the market towards the close and touched the day's low of 12837, down 417 points from the day's high. The Sensex ended the session with losses of 273 points at 12886. The Nifty shed 84 points and closed at 3727.

The breadth of the market was weak. Of the 2,637 stocks traded on the BSE 1,667 stocks declined, 922 stocks advanced and 48 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE CG Index shed over 3%. The BSE Teck Index, the BSE Oil & Gas Index and the BSE IT Index declined by over 2% each.

Selling was rampant in several index heavyweights. L&T at Rs1,465 and SBI at Rs1,008 slumped by over 4% each. TCS shed 3.76% at Rs1,208, Reliance Industries plunged 3.61% at Rs1,317, ITC crumbled by 3.45% at Rs167, HDFC Bank declined 3.40% at Rs948, BHEL dropped 3.34% at Rs2,099, and Reliance Communications was down 3.01% at Rs415. Wipro, Bharti Airtel, Grasim, Cipla, ACC, Infosys, Reliance Energy, Tata Steel, Gujarat Ambuja, Tata Motors, Satyam Computers and ICICI Bank shed 1-2% each. However, select counters managed to buck the downtrend and close in positive territory. Hero Honda rose 3.69% at Rs692, HLL added 1.70% at Rs179, HDFC was up 1.45% at Rs1,529 and Ranbaxy gained 1.22% at Rs347. Bajaj Auto, Hindalco and ONGC ended with the marginal gains.

Consumer goods stocks lost ground on selling pressure. Blue Star dropped 2.41% at Rs200, Gitanjali Gems slumped 2.22% at Rs205 and Lloyd Electric declined 2.09% at Rs152. Among the oil & gas stocks Bharat Petroleum slipped 3.15% at Rs299, Petronet LNG shed 1.82% at Rs43 and HPCL lost 1.50% at Rs263.

Over 50.16 lakh Indian Bank shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IDFC (35.48 lakh shares), Gujarat Ambuja (26.34 lakh shares), Tata Steel (25.18 lakh shares) and SAIL (23.77 lakh shares).

Value-wise Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs186 crore on the BSE followed by Tata Steel (Rs114 crore), Infosys (Rs91 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs67 crore) and SBI (Rs61 crore).