Sensex sheds 71 points

A day after the Sensex slipped over 131 points on an all-round selling, the market opened on a negative note. The market was gloomy amid a range-bound trend during intra-day trades influenced by subdued international markets. The Sensex saw strong optimism vanish after adding 61 points to touch the day's high of 16,111. The market thereafter zigzagged between its positives and negatives, but eased in the afternoon on sustained selling in information technology (IT), banking and auto stocks to touch the intra-day low of 15,869. Heavy buying in most of the index pivotal stocks helped the Sensex trim most of its losses towards the close and end the session at 16,016, down 71 points. The Nifty closed with gain of a point at 4,830.

However, the market breadth was in favour of gainers as 1,490 stocks advanced, 1,223 stocks declined and 61 stocks remained unchanged on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Most of the sectoral indices closed with losses. BSE IT, Bankex and BSE Auto index were the major losers and slipped over 1-3% each. However, BSE Realty index soared 2.23% followed by BSE FMCG, HC, Power index and BSE Metal index all of which soared.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 16 ended in green. Attracting strong buying support, Hindalco Industries surged by 6.61% to Rs172.50, Hindustan Utilities shot up by 4.10% at Rs244, Cipla jumped by 2.89% at Rs211.60, Bharti Airtel advanced by 2.68% at Rs824.65, ITC scaled up by 2.54% at Rs200.05, DLF zoomed 2.47% at Rs674.05, Jaiprakash Associates added 2.30% at Rs231.25 and Reliance Communications gained 2.27% at Rs538.05. Among the laggards, Satyam tumbled 4.35% at Rs395.05, SBI slipped 3.69% at Rs1,650.45, Infosys fell 3.66% at Rs1,440.80, Tata Motors was down 3.56% at Rs655.20, TCS lost 2.97% at Rs853.15, Ranbaxy moved up 2.78% at Rs435.65 and L&T moved down 2.71% at Rs2,963.

Over 1.22 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (1.16 crore shares), IFCI (0.93 crore shares), Nagarjuna Constructions (0.68 crore shares) and RPL (0.59 crore shares).