Market recovers lost ground in late buying

The Sensex lost its initial grip as a lack of buying interest and sustained selling in front-line stocks dragged the index to negative territory despite a smart recovery of over 380 points in the mid-morning trades. The Sensex, which was in a bear grip in the last few sessions, resumed in negative territory, tracking weak global cues, and fell sharply within a few minutes on heavy selling in blue chip stocks such as Reliance, Infosys and ACC. But, the index recovered as bargain hunters started buying at lower levels and touched the day's high of 17705. However, the Sensex entered in the red by afternoon on profit booking in heavyweights, information technology, oil and realty stocks. While the market maintained its negative bias for the better part of the day, the mood turned bullish towards the close and the index jumped into the green. The Sensex finally ended the session with a gain of 54 points at 17614 while the Nifty slipped 31 points to close at 5184.

The breadth of the market was neutral. Of the 2,754 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,330 stocks declined, 1,354 stocks advanced and 70 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended weak. The BSE Oil & Gas Index lost 1.59%, the BSE Teck Index declined by 1.54% and the BSE IT Index shed 1.42%. However, the BSE Bankex rose 2.17% and the BSE FMCG Index jumped by 1.16%.

Several heavyweights recovered on late buying. HDFC led the pack and shot up by 7.27% at Rs2,573. Ambuja Cement soared 4.12% at Rs145, ICICI Bank surged 3.74% at Rs1,062, M&M flared up by 3.58% at Rs754, Reliance Energy jumped by 2.76% at Rs1,370, ACC added 2.73% at Rs1,018, SBI advanced by 2.70% at Rs1,713, L&T moved up by 2.47% at Rs2,098 and Hindalco was up 2.03% at Rs178. However, Bharti Airtel slipped 4.21% at Rs928, TCS shed 2.92% at Rs1,074, Satyam Computer declined by 2.52% at Rs448, Reliance Industries fell by 2.29% at Rs2,413 and Maruti Udyog lost 1.92% at Rs1,054.

Over 5.44 crore Ambuja Cement shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Power Grid Corporation (1.61 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.54 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (97.09 lakh shares) and Reliance Petroleum (73.08 lakh shares).

Value-wise Ambuja Cement registered a turnover of Rs808 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Energy (Rs553 crore), United Breweries (Rs509 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs480 crore) and Reliance Communication (Rs235 crore).