Market lacked the lustre

After opening marginally above its previous close, the Sensex slipped into the red tracking weak global cues. The market continued to trade in a narrow range thereafter. The lack of interest in buying and the selling in index pivotal stocks dragged the index to the day's low of 14,965 by the afternoon. The Sensex entered into the green in the late trades due to resumption of buying in energy, banking and consumer durable stocks. But the index could not withstand the selling pressure and entered into the red again, finally closing the session at 15,001, down 16 points. The Nifty ended the session three points down at 4,370.

However, the market breadth was positive. Of the 2,763 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,571 stocks advanced, 1,103 stocks declined and 89 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE CD index moved up by 2.07% followed by the BSE Realty index (up 1.19%). However, the BSE Auto index, the BSE HC index, the BSE IT index, the BSE FMCG index and the BSE Teck index closed in negative territory.

Among the index heavyweights, NTPC flared up by 2.98% at Rs173, ONGC spurted 1.27% at Rs854, HDFC Bank scaled up 1.26% at Rs1,150, while Hindalco, Bharti Airtel, Dr Reddy's Lab, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto, Wipro and Reliance Industries gained marginally. However, ACC tumbled 2.17% at Rs990, HDFC slipped 2.13% at Rs1,941, Grasim was down 1.97% at Rs2,879, HLL lost 1.72% at Rs200 and M&M fell 1.59% at Rs679.

Over 1.92 crore Nagarjuna Fertilizers’ shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IKF Technologies (1.57 crore shares), IFCI (1.23 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.03 crore shares) and Omnitech (89.95 lakh shares).

Everonn Systems was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs380 crore followed by Omnitech (Rs150 crore), Orbit Corporation (Rs138 crore), IDBI (Rs97 crore) and SBI (Rs96 crore).