Market snaps early gains on late selling

The market showed strong optimism in early trades, but slowed down considerably by noon trades, before a wave of selling pressure in late trades pulled the index below the 17,300 mark at close. After resuming 101 points higher over its last close at 17,378, the Sensex rallied sharply in early trades to scale a new intra-day peak of 17,481. The market witnessed listless trading with a positive bias in noon trades due to lack of fresh buying support. However, late selling in select realty, consumer durables, Bankex and oil & gas stocks saw the index drift into red and touch the day's low of 17,242. The Sensex finally signed off the session with losses of 119 points at 17,259, while the Nifty moved down by 30 points to close at 5,166.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,768 stocks traded on the BSE 1,423 stocks declined, 1,280 stocks advanced and 65 stocks ended unchanged.

Among the laggards, HDFC tumbled 3.69% at Rs2,775, DLF dropped 2.84% at Rs705.25, Grasim shed 2.81% at Rs2,402.75, ICICI Bank lost 2.42% at Rs879,40, Hindalco moved down 2.32% at Rs193.60, HDFC Bank lost 2.20% at Rs1,513.50 and ACC declined 2.15% at Rs758.65. ONGC at Rs1,033.40, Reliance Industries at Rs2,614.85, Ranbaxy Laboratories at Rs480.05 and State Bank of India at Rs1,776.35 dipped by over 1% each.

Select counters attracted buying support. Mahindra rose 4.31% at Rs670.40, ITC advanced 3.61% at Rs219.80, Tata Motors flared up 3.48% at Rs662.20, Wipro gained 1.96% at Rs488.60 and Jaiprakash Associates was up 1.95% at Rs271.30.

Ispat Industries was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with trades of over 1.96 crore shares followed by IFCI (1.60 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.38 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.18 crore shares) and IB Securities (1.17 crore shares).

Valuewise, Sesa goa registered a turnover of Rs258 crore followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs240 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs235 crore), TitaGarh (Rs200 crore) and Reliance Capital (Rs188 crore)