Market dips marginally on late selling

The market was poised for another positive close, but a late bout of selling dragged the Sensex below 15300 and halted its upmove. Shrugging off the mixed trend in the US and European markets, the Sensex took a cue from the Asian indices and resumed 47 points above its last close at 15358. Extending the upmove on hectic buying support, the Sensex breached the 15400 mark and touched the day's high of 15440. The market remained above the crucial 15350 level for a major portion of the day, but it witnessed a major slump towards the close and touched an intra-day low of 15272. The Sensex closed with losses of 21 points at 15290, while the Nifty was down 15 points at 4497.

The breadth of the market was marginally weak. Of the 2733 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,692 stocks declined, 978 stocks advanced and 63 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral front, the BSE Oil & Gas index was up 1.46% at 7985 and the BSE IT index gained 0.65% at 4880 while the BSE CD index closed marginally higher at 4230. However BSE Metal index, BSE CD index, BSE AUto index and BSE PSU were down 1% each.

Among the major losers M&M shed 2.63% at Rs780, Reliance Com declined 2.31% at Rs561, BHEL fell 2.16% at Rs1623, SBI slipped 2.09% at Rs1580, Tata Steel dipped 1.98% at Rs681, Bharti Airtel lost 1.62% at Rs863 and Bajaj Auto slumped 1.61% at Rs2219. HDFC, Tata Motors, Grasim, HDFC Bank, REL, Cipla, Hindalco, L&T, ONGC and ACC were down 1% each. Ambuja Cements, however, gained 3% at Rs137, followed by RIL up 2.86% at Rs1827, TCS added 2.39% at Rs1155, Dr reddy's jumped 1.79% at Rs674 and Satyam was up by 1.30% at Rs488. Wipro and ITC were up 1% each. ICICI Bank, NTPC, Infosys and Ranbaxy ended the day in the positive territory.

Over 23.22 million Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Bella Steel (14.29 million shares), Celest Lab (77.87 lakh shares), Silverline Technologies (74.80 lakh shares) and IFCI (74.03 lakh shares).

Value-wise Indiabulls Real Estate registered a turnover of Rs403.62 crore on the BSE followed by Indiabulls (Rs238.85 crore), DLF (Rs185.94 crore), RIL (Rs166.85 crore) and GMR Infrastructure (Rs153.31 crore).