A tame ending to a highly volatile session

The market maintained a cautious trend for the day as the Sensex eased marginally at close on selective buying. However, the market was extremely volatile as stocks gyrated sharply, leading to a swing of 636 points during intra-day trades. After resuming 292 points lower at 15684, the Sensex dropped another 322 points in early trades on sustained selling to touch the day's low of 15362. It languished in negative territory thereafter in the first half and steadily erased its losses to rebound and close in positive territory in the afternoon session. It edged past the 15980 mark and touched the intra-day high of 15998 during the day. The Sensex failed to hold on to its steady gains and lost 52 points to close at 15924 whereas the Nifty ended 28 points higher at 4800.

Dragging the Sensex, L&T lost 8.68% at Rs2,728.80, BHEL dropped 5.69% at Rs1,910.40, Maruti Suzuki fell 4.25% at Rs893.45 and Satyam Computers declined 3.72% at Rs408. Wipro, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Grasim, Hind Utiliies, REL, Infosys, Ranbaxy and TCS were down nearly 1-2% each. However, Bharti Airtel advanced 6.85% at Rs802.80, Tata Steel scaled up 5.13% at Rs812.20, Bajaj Auto added 5.07% at Rs1,984.95, ACC gained 4.39% at Rs767.10, DLF jumped 3.44% at Rs680.35, Reliance Communications was up nearly 2.78% at Rs558.45 and SBI gained 2.20% at Rs1,882.40.

The breadth of the market was negative. Of the 2,708 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,915 stocks declined, 749 stocks advanced and 44 stocks ended unchanged. Of the 13 sectoral indices trading on the BSE, five indices ended in the green and eight slipped into the red. The BSE Metal Index was the major performer on the upside and gained 2.24% at 15799.61. The BSE Oil & Gas Index was up around 2.02% at 10.225.67.

Over 4.21 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (2.14 crore shares), Ispat (1.67 crore shares), Essar Oil (1.09 crore shares) and IFCI (0.92 crore shares).