Market overcomes early blues

The market seems to be nearing to another phase of correction. After dipping over 300 points in the last session, today the market opened on a bearish note, down 86 points to its previous close on the back of weak Asian indices. The Sensex succumbed to heavy losses as bears tightened their grip by selling heavyweights, banking and information technology stocks. By the mid morning trades the Sensex touched the intra-day low of 13694. The market witnessed selective buying at lower levels in the afternoon and the Sensex recovered 200 points from its day's low. The Sensex finally ended the session with a loss of 36 points at 13872, while the Nifty gained four points at 4088.

The broader market remained positive. Of the 2,548 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,406 stocks advanced, 1,061 stocks declined and 81 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in positive territory. The BSE IT Index gained 2.01% at 5053, the BSE Teck advanced 1.52% at 3725 while the BSE Bankex Index dropped 2.88% at 6883 and the BSE FMCG Index shed 1.13% at 1801.

Among the blue-chips, Reliance Communication shot up by 3.69% at Rs477, TCS soared 2.53% at Rs1,266, Hero Honda surged 2.30% at Rs684, Tata Steel advanced by 2.22% at Rs550, Infosys added 2.12% at Rs2,049, ACC moved up 2.06% at Rs839, Reliance Industries scaled up 1.42% at Rs1,560 and Satyam Computer was up 1.25% at Rs473. Among the laggards ICICI Bank dropped 7.26% at Rs866 and HLL shed 4.82% at Rs199 while Cipla, ONGC, Bharti Airtel, HDFC and Hindalco closed marginally lower.

Banking stocks came under sharp selling pressure. Oriental Bank tumbled by 7.55% at Rs197, Bank of Baroda slipped 2.86% at Rs236 and Bank of India slumped 1.94% at Rs192.

Over 3.58 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Tata Teliservices (1.20 crore shares), GV Films (42.26 lakh shares), Orbit Corporation (39.48 lakh shares) and Reliance Communication (34.40 lakh shares).

Value-wise Reliance Communication registered a turnover of Rs160 crore on the BSE followed by IFCI (Rs154 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs117 crore), Tech Mahindra (Rs88 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs85 crore).