A tame ending to highly volatile session

The market maintained a cautious trend for the straight session, as the Sensex eased marginally at close on selective selling. However, the market was extremely volatile as stocks gyrated sharply, leading to a swing of 357 points during intra-day trades. After resuming 113 points above at 18,228, the Sensex dropped 215 points in early trades on sustained selling to touch the day's low of 17,900. Languishing in negative territory thereafter in the first half, the Sensex steadily erased its losses and rebounded into positive territory in the afternoon trades to edge past the 18,250 mark and touch the intra-day high of 18,256. The Sensex failed to hold on to its steady gains and lost 67 points to close at 18,048, while the Nifty ended 26 points lower at 5,276.

Dragging the Sensex, Satyam lost 2.78% at Rs426, Tata Motors dropped 2.47% at Rs732.55, TCS fell 2.24% at Rs851.95, DLF lost 2.18% at Rs859.80 and BHEL declined 2% at Rs2,216. SBI, Reliance Industries, Wipro and ONGC were down nearly 1% each. However, M&M advanced 4.02% at Rs643.35, ITC scaled up 3.25% at Rs209.60, Hindalco added 3.14% at Rs184.10, Hind Utilites gained 2.56% at Rs216.60, ICICI Bank jumped 1.42% at Rs1,208 and Bajaj Auto was up nearly 1.16% at Rs2,199.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,772 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,848 stocks advanced, 876 stocks declined and 48 stocks ended unchanged. Of the 11 sectoral indices trading on the BSE, six indices ended in the green and seven slipped into the red. The BSE FMCG index was the major performer on the upside and gained 2.26% at 2,258, while the BSE Bankex index was up around 0.5% at 10,944. In the market which closed on a subdued note, FMCG stocks performed exceptionally well. REl Agro was frozen at the upper limit of 5% at Rs1,290.15, ITC surged 3.25% at Rs209.60 and Nestle shot up by 2.56% at Rs216.60.

Over 2.66 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (2.22 crore shares), Reliance Power (1.12 crore shares), Nagarjuna fertilisers (99.23 lakh shares) and HFCL (93.71 lakh shares).