Sensex pares early gains; down 65 points

The Sensex closed the session with a loss of 65 points. The market opened firm at 19,895 up 197 points and hit the day's high of 19,971 within few minutes of opening on selective buying in frontline stocks. However, the Sensex saw erosion of its early gains on the back of selling in banking, FMCG, and oil stocks. The market entered into negative territory by the afternoon. After gyrating over 387 points from the day's high, the Sensex finally closed the session with a loss of 65 points at 19,633, while the broader S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed marginally up at 5,908.

The broader market, however, continued to remain in the green. Of the 2,855 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 2,182 stocks advanced, 644 stocks declined and 29 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE CD was the biggest gainer and moved up by 3.04% at 5,360 followed by the BSE Auto index (up 2.45% at 5,413) and the BSE Realty index (up 2.15% at 10,748). However, the BSE bankex index, the BSE FMCG index, the BSE Oil & Gas index and the BSE PSU index closed in the red.

Among the laggards, ITC was down by 3.10% at Rs199, ICICI Bank declined by 2.67% at Rs1,187, HDFC Bank shed 1.89% at Rs1,655, Satyam Computer dropped 1.38% at Rs423, while, SBI, Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, Infosys, HDFC, and Wipro closed with marginal losses. However, select heavyweights attracted decent buying support. ACC surged 4.25% at Rs1,084, Cipla rose 3.43% at Rs187, Bajaj Auto jumped 3.32% at Rs2,426, Tata Steel added 2.32% at Rs863, M&M moved up by 2.19% at Rs749 and HLL gained 1.87% at Rs205.

Consumer durables stocks, however, were in the limelight. Videocon surged 8.99% at Rs438, Lloyd Electric jumped 4.46% at Rs176, Gitanjali Gems soared 3.36% at Rs388, Asian Star Company moved up by 2.46% at Rs1,322, Blue Star added 2.44% at Rs431 and Rajesh Exports closed with moderate gains.

Over 6.07 crore Tata Teleservices shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (2.30 crore shares), Essar Oil (1.48 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.44 crore shares) and IDFC (1.11 crore shares).

Essar Oil topped the value list with a turnover of Rs312 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs307 crore), Tata Teleservices (Rs293 crore), IDFC (Rs222 crore) and IFCI (Rs222 crore).