Despite opening at record high level of 14933 the Sensex gave up its gains as selling across the board assured that the index remained in the red. The market opened firm tracking positive Asian markets and touched its new all-time high for the third consecutive session at 14963. However, strong bouts of selling in front-line and cement stocks dragged the Sensex to the negative territory by mid-morning trades. The index slipped further in the afternoon and touched the day's low of 14731. While the market remained subdued thereafter, the buying at lower levels helped the Sensex to pare most of its losses towards the close and wrap up the session at 14862, down 18 points. The broad based Nifty closed the session at 4354, down five points.
The breadth of the market was negative, with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of nearly 1.71:1 on the BSE. Of the 2,637 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,627 stocks declined, 949 stocks advanced and 61 stocks remained unchanged. The sectoral indices closed in the mix. The BSE IT index slipped 1.03% at 4792 followed by the BSE Teck index (down 0.78% at 3725) and the BSE HC index (down 0.66% at 3839). However, the BSE Auto index gained 0.92% at 4882, the BSE CD index added 0.52% at 4214 and the BSE CG index moved up by 0.37% at 12619.
Most of the index stocks slipped on heavy selling. Reliance Energy led the slump and fell 3.27% at Rs591. Among the other major laggards Ranbaxy tumbled by 2.07% at Rs360, HDFC dropped 1.93% at Rs1942, HDFC Bank slumped 1.65% at Rs1130, NTPC fell 1.64% at Rs153, Satyam Computers declined by 1.49% at Rs468 and Hindalco lost 1.15% at Rs155. The other major front-line stocks shed 1% each. However, few bucked the downtrend. ICICI bank surged 2.03% at Rs1005, Maruti Udyog added 1.77% at Rs805, Tata Steel moved up 1.74% at Rs627, L&T gained 1.73% at Rs2331 and Dr Reddy's Lab rose 1.46% at Rs673.
IT stocks lost significantly on relentless selling. Four Soft dropped 4.43% at Rs56, Teledata Informatics shed 4.07% at Rs64, Aptech tumbled by 3.76% at Rs306, Accel Frontline declined by 3.29% at Rs60 and Patni Computer slipped by 3.27% at Rs493.
Over 3.42 crore DLF shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (2.57 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (97.63 lakh shares), NTPC (45.65 lakh shares) and Bellary Steel (44.33 lakh shares).
Value-wise DLF registered a turnover of Rs1,905 crore on the BSE followed by Vishal Retail (Rs251 crore), Indiabulls Real Estate (Rs160 crore), IFCI (Rs155 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs117crore).