Choppy, marginally down

Despite US indices closing in the green, the Indian stock market seemed to have lost steam after a strong opening. The benchmark opened with a positive gap of 16 points at 15940 and touched the day's high of 16002 within a few minutes of trading on brisk buying in heavyweights. However, it shed its early gains on account of heavy selling in realty, teck, health care and power stocks and entered the negative territory by afternoon. The Sensex swung between negative and positive thereafter, as investors turned cautious due to lack of clarity. The Sensex tumbled below the 15700 mark towards afternoon session to touch the intra-day low of 15699 amid relentless selling pressure, but buying at lower levels helped the Sensex pare some of the losses. The Sensex finally closed at 15831, down 93 points, while Nifty ended 31 points down at 4681. However the market breadth was firm, as gainers outpaced losers. Of the 2,794 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,480 stocks advanced, whereas 1,242 stocks declined. Seventy two stocks ended unchanged. Of the 13 sectoral indices on the BSE only four were up and that only marginally. BSE CD (up 1.41%), BSE Auto (up 0.51%), BSE FMCG (up 0.36%) and BSE Oil & Gas were up for the day. BSE Teck dropped 1.41% followed by BSE HC (down 1.35%), BSE Power (down 1.28%), BSE Realty (down 1.20%) and BSE IT (down 1.10%). Most of the index heavyweights witnessed correction. Among the Sensex majors, Tata Motors tumbled 4.42% to Rs1,298.20, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation dropped 2.98% to Rs1,141.05, Reliance Infrastructure lost 2.78% to trade at Rs1,188.80, Bharti Airtel slumped 2.57% to Rs400.55, Reliance Communications slipped 2.55% to Rs282.50, JP Associates shed 2.33% to Rs244.75, DLF lost 1.80% to Rs398.35, Wipro fell 1.77% to Rs482.35, Tata Steel crumbled 1.77% to Rs475.05 and HDFC Bank dipped 1.58% to Rs1,470.15. Other front-line stocks lost around 1% each. However, select counters saw some buying and ended with gains. Hindalco Industries advanced 4.39% to Rs112.95 while Hindustan Unilever, Tata Motors, Reliance Industries, Maruti Suzuki India, Mahindra & Mahindra ended with modest gains. Mahindra Satyam was the most traded share on the BSE with over 1.84 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (1.83 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (1.59 crore shares), Unitech (1.56 crore shares) and Hindalco Industries (1.23 crore shares). In value terms Reliance Capital was the most actively traded counter with a turnover of Rs219 crore followed by Mahindra Satyam (Rs198 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs191 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs178 crore) and Tata Motors (Rs176 crore).