Sensex sheds its morning gains

Despite strong performance by Asian indices and overnight US indices doubled with positive opening of European markets, the Indian market didn't manage to sustain its morning gains and closed below the psychological level of 17000. Nikkei 225 gained 107.80 points or 1.11%, while Hang Seng rose by massive 430.06 points or 2.07%. Even European stocks rose in early trades, while currently FTSE was trading marginally up by 3.75 points or 0.07%. While traders in the US market will be looking forward to the data on crude inventories, consumer credit and treasury budget that will be out today and might decide the trading course for major US indices.

Benchmark BSE- 30 (Sensex) opened 162.02 points higher at 17120.56 over the yesterday’s closing, however, for the major part of the day it remained highly volatile and largely traded in the range of 16900-16950. While heavy selling in the IT and TECk heavyweights on the back of rupee strengthening against the US dollar pulled the Sensex down to hit the low of 16764.07 during the course of the day. The index witnessed a steep fall towards the closing hours and ended the session 151.88 points lower at 16806.66, while Nifty fell 41.65 points to close at 4985.75. The market breadth was flat as out of the 2,823 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,417 stocks advanced, whereas 1,337 stocks declined. Eighty-nine stocks ended unchanged.

Among sectoral indices, BSE CD rose 4.58%, BSE Metal surged 2.28%, while BSE HC gained 1.31%. While BSE IT plunged the most by 2.74%, followed by BSE TECk that lost 1.97% recording a fall for second consecutive trading session. The weakening of the US dollar raised concerns for primarily export-driven Indian IT sector, which resulted in a massive sell-off in IT stocks. Thus stocks like Mphasis led the top losers’ list slumping the most by 6.01% to Rs627.10 followed by Wipro that dropped 4.28% to Rs573.10, while Maruti Suzuki shed 3.86% to quote at Rs1,536.55, Rolta India lost 3.47% to trade at Rs194.75, Tata Consultancy Services slipped 3.31% to Rs592.95, While State Bank of India, Infosys Technologies, HCL Technologies, Grasim Industries, Reliance Communications, Sun TV, ICICI bank, Godrej Consumer, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Andhra Bank and Suzlon Energy were down by more than 2% each. Among gainers, Piramal Healthcare rose 10.06% to Rs413.05, Yes Bank surged 8.44% to Rs208.15, Titan gained 7.62% to Rs1,363.05 while Canara Bank, Sintex Industries, Godrej Industries rose 6% and stocks like Gujarat NRE Coke, Sterlite Industries, Lanco Infratech, Lupin and MMTC ended with strong gains of over 5%.

On turnover front, over 1.97 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Unitech (1.06 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (0.71 crore shares), IFCI (0.63 crore shares), Bharti Airtel (0.57 crore shares) and Idea Cellular (0.54 crore shares).