Tame ending to a highly volatile session

The market maintained a cautious trend for the second straight session, as the Sensex eased sharply at close on selective selling. However, the market was extremely volatile, as stocks gyrated sharply leading to a swing of 299 points during intra-day trades. After resuming 36 points lower at 15,755, the Sensex dropped another 100 points in early trades on sustained selling to touch the day's low of 15,655. 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 15,950 mark and touch the intra-day high of 15,954. However, it failed to hold on to its steady gains and lost 95 points to close at 15,695, while the Nifty ended 14 points lower at 4,733.

Dragging the Sensex, ICICI Bank lost 4.25% at Rs800.95, Ranbaxy Laboratories dropped 4.20% at Rs450.65, HDFC Bank fell 3.67% at Rs1,325.55 and Jaiprakash Associates declined 3.07% at Rs212.80. Bharti Airtel, HUL, Reliance Coomunications and SBI were down nearly 2% each. However, Reliance Energy advanced 6.50% at Rs1,253.35, TCS scaled up 2.75% at Rs900.75, RIL added 2.05% at Rs2,467.70, L&T gained 1.55% at Rs2,678.30, Ambuja Cements jumped 1.50% at Rs122 and Tata Steel was up nearly 1% at Rs685.90.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,730 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,707 stocks advanced, 954 stocks declined and 69 stocks ended unchanged. Of the 13 sectoral indices trading on the BSE, five indices ended in green, while eight slipped in red. The BSE Oil & Gas index was the major performer on the upside and gained 1.47% at 10,727, while the BSE Metal index was up around 0.55% at 13,855.

The market, which closed on a subdued note, Oil & Gas stocks performed exceptionally well. Cairn India surged 5.74% at Rs242.15 and RPL shot up by 3.17% at Rs175.50. Essar Oil, RIL, Aban Offshore, RNRL gained over 1-3% each.

Over 2.04 crore Reliance Petroleum shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Sita Shree Food Products (1.91 crore shares), RNRL (1.65 crore shares), Orchid Chemical (0.98 crore shares) and IFCI (0.95 crore shares