Sensex slips after a four-session rally

The Sensex paused after a strong four-day rally. The Securities and Exchange Board of India allowing foreign institutional investors and mutual funds to short sell in the spot market had little or no impact on the market sentiment. The market opened with a positive gap of 36 points but soon slipped into negative territory on profit booking in banking and fast moving consumer goods counters that saw the Sensex touch an intra-day low of 13197. The Sensex witnessed some momentum in the afternoon on value buying at lower levels and touched the day's high of 13387. The index faltered towards the close on a fresh bout of selling and closed with losses of 22 points at 13286. The Nifty closed at 3861, down 15 points.

The breadth of the market was negative. Of the 2,641 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,512 stocks declined, 1,037 stocks advanced and 92 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE FMCG Index was the biggest loser and slipped by 1.20% at 1689 followed by the BSE IT Index (down 0.54% at 5068) and the BSE Teck Index (down 0.46% at 3625). However, the BSE CG Index rallied sharply and gained 1.75% at 9129 followed by the BSE Metal Index (up 0.27% at 8454).

Among the laggards ITC was down 3.42% at Rs144, Gujarat Ambuja declined 2.27% at Rs105, Tata Motors shed 1.99% at Rs789, Bajaj Auto dropped 1.32% at Rs2,534 and Reliance Energy lost 1.19% at Rs486. TCS at Rs1,289 and HDFC Bank at Rs1,012 fell around 1.11% each. However, select heavyweights attracted decent buying support. L&T surged 3.79% at Rs1,632, Cipla rose 2.79% at Rs242, BHEL jumped 2.22% at Rs2,280, HDFC added 1.37% at Rs1,594 and Maruti Udyog gained 1.04% at Rs840.

Capital Goods stocks, however, were in the limelight. Crompton Greaves surged 5.35% at Rs201, Gammon India jumped 3.69% at Rs310, Bharat Electrical soared 2.22% at Rs1,547 and Carborundum Universal gained 1.81% at Rs143.

Over 48.50 lakh Reliance Petroleum shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IDBI (33.40 lakh shares), SAIL (26.71 lakh shares), Idea Cellular (26.29 lakh shares) and Century Textiles (24.27 lakh shares).

Century Textiles topped the value list with a turnover of Rs133 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs85 crore), L&T (Rs78 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs68 crore) and Tata Motors (Rs68 crore).