Market lacked lustre

The market began the day on a firm note. After opening 34 points above its previous close at 14685, the Sensex advanced to touch a new intra-day high of 14745.

However due to a lack of movement in most of the counters, the trading thereafter was range-bound with an upward bias. The market eventually gave up its early gains in the afternoon trades and the emergence of sharp selling towards the end saw the index slip below the 14700 mark to touch the day's low of 14639. Although selective buying trimmed the losses of the index at the close, yet it ended the session with a marginal gain of 14 points at 14664. The Nifty ended a tad lower than its previous close at 4317.

The BSE Mid-cap Index rose 1% at 6591 while the BSE Small-cap Index moved up 0.68% at 7783 in a range-bound market. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Auto index, the BSE CG index, the BSE HC index and the BSE Teck index were up nearly half percent each.

The BSE Metal index, the BSE Bankex, the BSE IT index and the BSE Oil & Gas index, however, were the laggards. Gujarat Ambuja led the weakness and dropped 1.69% at Rs122. While TCS slumped 1.27% at Rs1,135, Wipro lost 1.11% at Rs513 and Hindalco shed 1.06% at Rs158. Reliance was down 1% at Rs1,685. ICICI Bank, ONGC, Tata Steel, Grasim and ITC were down.

Maruti Udyog, however, remained firm through the session and moved up 3.80% at Rs771. While Ranbaxy jumped by 2.75% at Rs375, Reliance Communication added 2.45% at Rs530 and Tata Motors gained 2.14% at Rs684. L&T scaled up 1.77% at Rs2,235 and Reliance Energy was up nearly 1.66% at Rs624.

Auto stocks stole the limelight and ended with sharp gains. Swaraj Engines Company rose 7.67% at Rs186. While Sono Koyo shot up by 4.95% at Rs47.70, Automo Car advanced 4.76% at Rs558. JMT Auto surged 4.28% at Rs95 and Balkrishna Industries moved up 4.02% at Rs635.

Amara Raja at Rs553.20, IFCI at Rs60.50, SBI at Rs1,549.90, Titan India at Rs1,378, Kotak Bank at Rs678, Great Estate at Rs366.50 and Automobile Corporation at Rs584 scaled to new intra-day highs.

Reliance Petro clocked volumes of over 50.26 lakh shares on the BSE followed by IDBI (49.87 lakh shares), Welspun Gujarat (36.43 lakh shares), Dena Bank (21.65 lakh shares) and GMR Infrastructure (20.88 lakh shares).

GMR Infra was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs159.20 crore followed by Reliance Industries (Rs103.23 crore), Welspun Guj (Rs85.01 crore), RCom (Rs80.23 crore) and State Bank of India (Rs75.24 crore).