Sensex ends down 54pts

The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 71 points at 15,668, and touched a high of 15,699 in morning trades.

Profit-taking in early noon trades reversed the trend, and sustained selling in auto and technology stocks saw the index drop to 15,506 - down 193 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 54 points at 15,543.

While the BSE IT index plunged over 2% to 4471, the Metal index moved up over 1% to 11,772.

The market breadth was marginally positive - out of 2,802 stocks traded, 1,402 advanced, 1,340 declined and 60 were unchanged today.

INDEX SHAKERS...

Infosys and Wipro dropped 2.5% each to Rs 1,823 and Rs 455, respectively. TCS and Satyam slipped over 2% each to Rs 1,024 and Rs 433, respectively.

Tata Motors tumbled nearly 2% to Rs 690. Maruti shed 1.7% at Rs 862.

SBI, ICICI Bank, Ambuja Cements and Dr.Reddy's declined over 1% each to Rs 1,622, Rs 901, Rs 143 and Rs 653, respectively.

...AND THE MOVERS

NTPC surged 2.4% to Rs 196. HDFC rallied 2% to Rs 2,145.

Tata Steel gained 2.3% at Rs 709, and Hindalco added 1.6% to Rs 157.

Hindustan Unilever moved up 1.5% to Rs 217. ACC and BHEL were up 1% each at Rs 1,104 and Rs 1,911, respectively.

MOTILAL GAINS 18% ON DEBUT

Motilal Oswal Financials listed at Rs 999 - a 21% premium to its issue price of Rs 825 per share - on the BSE. The stock touched a low of Rs 913, and finally ended at Rs 974 - a gain of 18% (Rs 149) on listing day.

MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS

Debutant Motilal Oswal topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 363.50 crore followed by IFCI (Rs 188.70 crore), Reliance (Rs 120 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 109 crore) and Tata Tele (Rs 96.30 crore).

Tata Tele led the volume chart with trades of around 2.85 crore shares followed by IFCI (2.45 crore), Reliance Natural (1.77 crore), Nagarjuna Fertilisers (94.30 lakh) and IKF Technologies (81.20 lakh)