Choppy but listless

Despite Asian indices opening firm, the market seemed to have lost steam after opening strong in the morning. The 30-share Sensex of the BSE opened with a positive gap of 173 points at 14,215 and touched the day's high of 14,221 within minutes of trading on the back of brisk buying in heavyweights. However, it shed its early gains on account of heavy selling in capital goods (CG), power, automobile and information technology stocks and entered the negative territory by afternoon. The index tumbled below the 14,000 mark towards the close to touch the intra-day low of 13,917 amid relentless selling pressure. The Sensex finally closed with a loss of 47 points at 14,080. The Nifty closed at 4,223, down 22 points.

The market breadth was weak Of the 2,666 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,354 stocks declined, while 1,234 stocks advanced. 78 stocks ended unchanged. Select sectoral indices slipped sharply. The BSE CG index dropped 2.24% followed by BSE Power index (down 1.62%), the BSE Auto index (down 1.11%) and the BSE IT index (down 0.75%).

Most of the index heavyweights witnessed correction. Among the Sensex majors, Satyam Computer Services tumbled 4.69% at Rs352.75, JP Associates dropped 3.84% at Rs130.05, Maruti Suzuki India lost 3.17% at Rs718.15, and Hindalco slumped by 2.66% at Rs109.85. Larsen & Toubro slipped 2.66% at Rs2576.60, Tata Motors shed 1.88% at Rs414.90, Reliance Infrastructure lost 1.88% at Rs877.30, Sterlite Industries fell by 1.63% at Rs460, BHEL crumbled by 1.57% at Rs1,683.90 and DLF dipped 1.41% at Rs420.90. The other front-line stocks lost around 1% each. However, select counters saw some buying and added to their value. ACC advanced by 3.22% at Rs624.05 while Tata Steel, ITC, Hindustan Unilever, Bharti Airtel, Grasim Industries and ICICI Bank ended with modest gains.

Over 1.49 crore shares of Reliance Natural Resources changed hands on the BSE followed by Sesa Goa (1.38 crore shares), IFCI (0.86 crore shares), JP Associates (73.01 lakh shares) and Idea Cellular (71.33 lakh shares).