Markets put valiant front

Weak global cues today and negative breadth in yesterday's trades led the market open lower today. The Sensex was down 304 points at the open and remained subdued, as investors booked profits after the recent gains. Auto, consumer durables and oil & gas stocks took the major beating. The index faltered under selling pressure by afternoon and slipped to the day's low of 8,467. While the market fluctuated sharply thereafter, the firm bullish sentiment and strong buying in heavyweights and realty stocks in the late trades helped the Sensex erase most of its losses. The Sensex finally ended the session by shedding 1.14% or 101 points at 8,739. Nifty slipped 25 points at 2,658.

The market breadth was negative, Of the 2,161 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,297 stocks declined whereas 801 stocks advanced. Sixty three stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE Auto dropped 3.04% followed by BSE CD (down 2.61%) and BSE Oil & Gas (down 2.45%). However, BSE Realty gained 2.14%, BSE FMCG advanced 1.04% and BSE Power (up 0.48%).

Heavyweights led the fall in the Sensex. Mahindra & Mahindra slipped by 8.21% at Rs249.80, Maruti Suzuki India slumped by 5.24% at Rs460.05, Tata Consultancy Services shed 5.21% at Rs434.55, Larsen & Toubro lost 3.46% at Rs679.20, Sterlite Industries was down 3.29% at Rs230.85 and Tata Motors tumbled by 3.28% at Rs128.40. Among the gainers Reliance Infrastructure jumped 5.37% at Rs492.70, Bharti Airtel surged 3.05% at Rs671, JP Associates shed 2.76% at Rs57.80, National Thermal Power Corporation fell by 2.46% at Rs160.05 and ITC was down 2.45% at Rs169.55, while DLF and Ranbaxy Laboratories ended with modest gains.

Over 2.68 crore shares of Unitech changed hands on the BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (1.16 crore shares), GVK Power & Infrastructure (1.13 crore shares), India Steel Works (75.02 lakh shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (53.18 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs260 crore on the BSE followed by State Bank of India (Rs176 crore), Reliance Infrastructure (Rs164 crore), Educomp Solutions (Rs127 crore) and Larsen & Toubro (Rs118 crore).