Up but gives away gains

Market closes higher, but 92 points off its day's high of 8995
Opening with a positive gap of 91 points at 8913 the market remained up for the better part of the day. In the first half of the session, the market remained firm above 8900 levels due to action in several counters. In the second half it gained further strength to touch the day's high of 8995. Towards the close, the market slipped, as if for a negative close, as weakness in select heavyweight, realty and capital goods stocks shaved off nearly 115 points from the day?s high to an intra-day low of 8880, only 58 points over its previous close. Sensex ended the session 81 points up at 8903, whereas Nifty added 29 points to close at 2762.

The market breadth was slightly positive. Of the 2,523 stocks traded on BSE, 1,228 stocks advanced, whereas 1,188 stocks declined. 107 stocks ended unchanged. Of the 13 sectoral indices only BSE CG and BSE Realty posted losses for the day. BSE Auto topped the list of gaining sectors posting a gain of up 3% followed by BSE IT (up 2.52%), BSE Teck (up 1.56%) and BSE Metal (up 1.28%).

Select blue chips notched significant gains. Mahindra & Mahindra rose 8.27% at Rs319.50, Tata Motors advanced 5.90% at Rs139.90, Reliance Infrastructure climbed 3.44% at Rs506, Tata Consultancy Services surged 3.11% at Rs481, Wipro scaled up 2.83% at Rs218.20, Infosys added 2.36% at Rs1212.10 and Hindalco Industries jumped 2.30% at Rs40. Among laggards, HDFC tumbled by 4.19% at Rs1235.05 and Ranbaxy Laboratories dropped 3.40% at Rs207.55 while DLF, Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Communications, Hindustan Unilever and Tata Steel ended with marginal losses.

Over 0.96 crore shares of Satyam Computer Services changed hands on the BSE followed by Cals Refineries (79 lakh shares), DLF (72 lakh shares), Unitech (67 lakh shares) and Suzlon Energy (62 lakh shares).