Market slips amid sharp volatility

Market gyrated sharply between zones throughout the trading session and swung 400 points during the intra-day trades. Taking its cue from firm global indices, the Sensex started on a positive note at 16,813, but failed to sustain the gains. Profit booking on every rise saw the Sensex slip below 16,500 mark and touch the day's low of 16,565. While market remained lacklustre with negative bias, renewed buying in afternoon trades helped the Sensex to surge to an intra-day high of 16,967, up 336 points from its previous close. However, a fresh round of profit-taking towards the fag end saw the Sensex pare its gains and end at 16,608, down 23 points, while the Nifty shed 19 points to close at 4,838.

The broader market remained weak. Of the 2,712 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 2,237 stocks declined, 443 stocks advanced and 32 stocks ended unchanged. Barring the BSE Bankex index and the BSE Oil & Gas index, the other sectoral indices ended in the negative territory. The BSE CD index dropped 3.62% at 4,343, the BSE Auto index shed 1.57% at 4,509 and the BSE PSU index was down 1.49% at 7,659.

Among the major losers, TCS dropped 4.25% at Rs865, M&M slumped 3.03% at Rs579, Reliance Energy shed 2.94% at Rs1,536, ACC lost 2.63% at Rs718, Reliance Communications declined 2.49% at Rs576 and Tata Steel slipped by nearly 2.15% at Rs710. However, ICICI Bank notched up gains of 2.71% at Rs1,064, Reliance Industries rose 2.17% at Rs2,324, while Ranbaxy, Bharti Airtel and SBI closed with modest gains.

Consumer durables stocks came under sharp selling pressure. Blue Star tumbled by 6.56% at Rs428, Videocon Industries slipped 4.99% at Rs371, Titan Industries slumped 3.53% at Rs988 and Gitanjali Gems fell 2.06% at Rs281.

Over 3.36 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Power (2.30 crore shares), J Kumar Infraprojects (2.05 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.05 crore shares) and Ispat Industries (1.01 crore shares).

Valuewise, Reliance Power registered a turnover of Rs821 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Capital (Rs433 crore), RNRL (Rs403 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs264 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs237 crore).