Sensex sheds 100 points

After clocking gains of over 250 points in early morning session, Sensex resumed 65 points higher at 12,741 and surged above 12,900 on sustained buying. However, the market soon turned negative on emergence of selling and touched an intra-day below 12,550, with the index falling sharply in noon trades to touch the day's low of 12,514. The index pared losses to a considerable extend and ended the session with a loss of 100 points at 12,576, while the Nifty declined 44 points at 3,816.

The breadth of the market was weak. Of the 2,692 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,803 stocks declined, 810 stocks advanced and 79 stocks ended unchanged. Barring the BSE HC and the BSE FMCG, rest of the sectoral indices ended in negative territory. The BSE Realty index declined 6.31% at 4,219, while the BSE Auto, the BSE Metal index, the BSE CD index and the BSE Bankex indexes ended lower around 2% each.

Among the losers in heavyweights, DLF dropped 7.73% at Rs393.95, Jaiprakash fell 6.09% at Rs136.50, Mahindra & Mahindra shed 5.42% at Rs493.65, HDFC declined 4.43% at Rs1,720.50 and SBI slipped 3.32% at Rs1,138.75. Other losers like Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services, ACC, Tata Motors and ICICI Bank were down around 2-3% each. However, Ranbaxy Laboratories bucked the downtrend and jumped 15.02% at Rs470.70, Bharti Airtel gained 2.87% at Rs730.35, ONGC advanced 2.52% at Rs866.30, Hindustan Unilever scaled up 1.77% at Rs215.40 and Gujarat Ambuja Cements added 1.37% at Rs81.30.

Realty stocks were the major losers. Unitech dropped 10.68% at Rs137.15, Puravankara shed 5.80% at Rs155.90, Omaxe lost 5.25% at Rs115.55, Sobha Developers declined 4.51% at Rs229.55 and Parsvnath fell 4.48% at Rs103.35. Peninsula land, Ansal Infrastructure, HDIL, Anant Raj and Phoenix Mill were down over 1-4% each.

Over 1.80 crore Reliance Petroleum shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (1.76 crore shares), IFCI (1.34 crore shares), Chambal Fertilisers (1 crore shares) and Ranbaxy Laboratories (70.47 lakh shares).