Sensex closes up, but down 186 points from the day's high

The market appeared to be heading towards a negative close, after a strong bout of profit taking towards the close shaved off nearly 186 points from the day’s high. Till the afternoon session the Sensex witnessed strong optimism after resuming with a huge positive gap of 107 points at 14171. While the action in several counters held the market firm above the 14200 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 14269. However, the market slipped towards the close as the weakness in select heavyweight, banking, consumer durables and technology stocks dragged the index to an intra-day low of 14058, down six points for the day. The Sensex ended the session with marginal gains of 20 points at 14083, while the Nifty added a point to close at 4146.

The market breadth was negative, with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of 1.16:1. Of the 2,621 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,375 stocks declined, 1,160 stocks advanced and 86 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE CD index dropped 0.33% at 3881 followed by the BSE Bankex (down 0.18% at 7428) and the BSE Teck index (down 0.11% at 3736).

Among the Sensex stocks, auto major Hero Honda was the leading gainer and soared 3.24% at Rs703. ITC advanced 2.12% at Rs154, Hindalco jumped 2.06% at Rs161, HDFC shot up by 1.66% at Rs1,779, Infosys added 1.49% at Rs1,980, while HDFC Bank, NTPC, Reliance Industries, BHEL and Satyam Computer closed with marginal gains. Among the laggards, Reliance Communication tumbled 2.18% at Rs505, Grasim shed 1.91% at Rs2,347 and SBI declined by 1.25% at Rs1,340 whereas Dr Reddy's Lab and Tata Steel lost 1% each at Rs666 and Rs580 respectively.

Over 78.38 lakh GV Films shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (72.13 lakh shares), IFCI (70.36 lakh shares), Silverline Technologies (49.25 lakh shares) and Dena Bank (37.56 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs114 crore on the BSE followed by Nitin Fire Protections (Rs92 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs61 crore), Indiabulls Real Estate (Rs59 crore) and Infosys (Rs55 crore).