Sensex slips amid sharp volatile trades

The market saw high volatility during the day as stocks gyrated between either sides of the zones throughout the session with the Sensex witnessing the intra-day swing of 151 points. The market opened higher buoyed by the overnight gains in the US markets, but pared early gains as investors' sentiment turned cautious as the Sensex neared its lifetime high of 15,868 points. Thereafter, sustained selling in frontline, auto and metal stocks saw the Sensex enter into negative territory. After displaying some range-bound moves, the market plunged deep into the red on heavy selling towards the close to touch the day's low of 15,565. The Sensex finally closed the session at 15,590, down 26 points. The Nifty had a flat close at 4510, down nine points.

The breadth of the market was neutral. Of the 2,767 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) 1,318 stocks declined, 1,368 stocks advanced and 81 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Realty index shed 1.03%, the BSE Auto index declined 0.97% and the BSE Metal index was down 0.67%. However, the BSE FMCG index and the BSE PSU index closed in the green.

Selective buying helped the index overcome its losses. ITC gained 1.83% at Rs178, ONGC advanced 1.63% at Rs851 and Hindalco added 1.29% at Rs157. HDFC, HDFC Bank, Reliance Communications, NTPC, Infosys, Dr reddy's Lab and Grasim notched up steady gains.

Selling was evident in select heavyweights. Mahindra & Mahindra dropped 2.46% at Rs704, Cipla declined 2.35% at Rs180, Tata Motors tumbled 2.15% at Rs697, ACC shed 1.40% at Rs1,087, Reliance Energy dipped 1.16% at Rs850, HUL was down 1.11% at Rs214 and Reliance shed 1.10% at Rs1,961.

Over 1.33 crore Nagarjuna Fertilisers shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.19 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (92.52 lakh shares), IKF Technologies (90.92 lakh shares) and Bella Steel (80.40 lakh shares).

Value wise, Aptech clocked a turnover of Rs126 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs100 crore), Welspun Gujrat (Rs95 crore), ONGC (Rs92 crore) and IFCI (Rs84 crore).