Indices close flat

The market had a flat close as traders continued to book profits at the expiry of July derivative contracts.

After a cautious start at 14,359, above 72 points its previous close, the Sensex came under selling pressure and slipped into the red below the 14,200 mark amid weakness in several Asian indices to touch the day's low of 14,162, down 125 points. The market stabilised by afternoon and continued its northwards journey on healthy buying in heavyweights, metal and oil & gas stocks. The market remained choppy thereafter and moved in a range with a mixed bias. Strong optimism in frontline, metal, oil & gas and power stocks saw the index touch an intra-day high of 14,370, up 28 points from the day's low. However, profit bookings at the close saw the Sensex end the session with a marginal gain of 69 points at 14,356, while Nifty added 19 points to close at 4,333.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,697 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,326 stocks declined, 1,296 stocks advanced and 75 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Metal index gained 1.68%, while the BSE Oil & Gas index, the BSE Power index and the BSE Realty index were up over 0.75% each. The BSE HC index, the BSE Teck index, the BSE IT index and the BSE Bankex were marginally down.

Among the heavyweights, Tata Power gained 4% at Rs1,160.10, Tata Steel soared 3.95% at Rs654.95, DLF surged 3.79% at Rs509.30, State Bank of India moved up by 2.03% at Rs1,414.75, Reliance Industries scaled up 1.99% at Rs2,206.20, Sterlite Industries was up 1.50% at Rs631.30, Mahindra & Mahindra advanced by 1.29% at Rs520.55 and Ranbaxy Laboratories gained 1.29% at Rs499.10. However, Tata Motors slipped 3.13% at Rs403.25, followed by Grasim Industries, which was down 2.78% at Rs1,800.45. Maruti Suzuki India slumped by 2.36% at Rs574.90, Wipro shed 1.53% at Rs416 and Bharti Airtel lost 1.33% at Rs799.15.

Over 3.72 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Birla Cotsyn (1.79 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.30 crore shares), BL Kashyap & Sons(0.88 crore shares) and Chambal Fertilisers (0.83 crore shares).

Reliance Natural Resources was the most actively traded counter with a turnover of Rs370 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Capital (Rs344 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs182 crore), Tata Steel (Rs163 crore) and Reliance Infra (Rs135 crore).