Positive but down

The market appeared to be heading towards a negative close after a strong bout of profit taking towards the close shaved off nearly 250 points from the day’s high. After resuming 112 points up at 16296, till afternoon the Sensex witnessed strong optimism. While action in several counters held the market firm above 16300 levels in the first half, the index notched up further gains in afternoon to touch the day's high of 16435. However, the market slipped towards the close as weakness in select heavyweights, realty, consumer durables and auto stocks dragged the index to an intra-day low of 16166. The Sensex ended the session with marginal gains of 33 points at 16217, while Nifty added 5 point to its kitty to close at 4819.

Advance decline ratio tilted in favour of declining scrips. Of the 2,880 stocks on the BSE, 1,710 stocks declined, whereas 1,093 stocks advanced. Seventy-seven stocks did not see any change. Bar metal, banking, consumer durable and realty, other nine sectoral indices were mildly positive or negative. BSE Metal and BSE Bankex were 1.23% and 1.01% up respectively, while BSE CD and BSE Realty were 1.58% and 2.26% down respectively.

Of the 30 Sensex stocks, 14 were down whereas 16 were up for the day. The biggest private bank ICICI Bank topped the chart gaining 3.12% to quote at Rs815.55. The largest Indian copper maker Sterlite Industries advanced 2.51% to trade at Rs766.70. Steel maker Tata Steel jumped 2.27% to Rs470.35, IT major Infosys Technologies shot up by 1.92% to Rs2,235.10, Bharti Airtel added 1.81% to Rs417.25, while Tata Motors, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Reliance Communications, ITC and HDFC Bank closed with marginal gains. Among laggards, real estate company DLF tumbled 2.77% to Rs408.75, India’s largest two wheeler maker Hero Honda Motors shed 2.45% to Rs1,587.90, JP Associates declined 2.25% to Rs232.60 and Hindalco Industries lost 2.05% to trade at Rs117.15 whereas Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki India, Reliance Infrastructure, Grasim Industries, HDFC and Hindustan Unilever lost 1% each respectively.

Over 3.10 crore shares of Reliance Natural Resources changed hands on the BSE followed by Sanraa Media (2.21 crore shares), NHPC (1.74 crore shares), IFCI (1.38 crore shares) and Suzlon Energy (1.27 crore shares).