Heavyweights, tech stocks drag market down

The Sensex continued its subdued trend for the second consecutive session. The market was gloomy amid a range-bound trend during the intra-day trades. After adding more than 71 points to yesterday's close, the market soon eased and slipped further in the afternoon, as investors booked profits in select pivotal stocks. Lack of buying support and selling in technology stocks triggered a major slump and the Sensex touched the day's low at 15,506. Select buying towards the close saw the Sensex pare some losses and end the session at 15,543, down 54 points. Nifty shed 11 points and closed at 4,497.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,802 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,402 stocks advanced, 1,339 stocks declined and 61 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices gained marginally. The BSE Metal index was the major gainer and surged 1.43% followed by the BSE FMCG index (up 0.62%) and the BSE PSU index (up 0.56%). However, the BSE IT index tumbled 2.19%, the BSE Teck index was down 1.41%, the BSE Auto index shed 0.68% and the BSE Bankex index fell 0.77%.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 11 ended at higher levels while 19 closed in the red. NTPC led the upsurge and flared by 2.41% at Rs196. Among the other major gainers Tata Steel surged 2.27% at Rs709, HDFC moved up by 1.98% at Rs2,145, Hindalco advanced 1.62% at Rs157, HLL added 1.47% at Rs217 and BHEL gained 1.03% at Rs1,911 while ACC, L&T, Bajaj Auto and Ranbaxy closed with moderate gains.

Select IT stocks witnessed considerable selling pressure. HCL Tech dropped 2.93% at Rs285, Infosys lost 2.58% at Rs1,823, Patni Computers declined by 2.49% at Rs461, Wipro slipped by 2.45% at Rs456 and TCS was down 2.21% at Rs1,024.

Over 2.85 crore Tata Teleservices shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (2.44 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.77 crore shares), Nagarjuna Fertilisers (94.36 lakh shares) and IKF Technologies (81.20 lakh shares).

Motilal Oswal was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs363 crore followed by IFCI (Rs188 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs120 crore), Tata Steel (Rs108 crore) and Tata Teleservices (Rs96 crore).