Stunning come back for Sensex

Indian markets staged a solid come back towards the closing hours of the trading session even as concerns persisted over the European debt crisis. The benchmark Indian indices ended near day's high, recovering smartly from their respective intra-day's lows. "The incredible recovery was led by short-covering in the last half an hour of trades", says Amar Ambani Vice President, Research IIFL.

As expected, the markets started off with a gap down as confidence went for a toss after the US stocks suffered their steepest drop in three months. Sentiment was hit badly amid mounting fears that Greece may not be able to avoid bankruptcy for long despite getting US$140bn aid.

Markets around the world are also worried that the debt contagion could spread to other debt-stricken southern European nations such as Spain and Portugal.

Finally, the BSE Sensex lost 49 points to end at 17,087 and NSE Nifty fell 24 points to close at 5,125. Among the 30 components of Sensex, 15 ended in the negative terrain and 15 ended in the green

Markets in Asia ended in the red; the Nikkei in Japan was closed for the third day in a row, Australia's S&P/ASX was down 1.3%, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was down 2.1% and Shanghai SE Composite also was closed.

On the other hand, European indices were trading in the green, the DAX in Germany was up 0.3%, the CAC 40 index in France was up 0.4% and the FTSE in the UK was up 0.3%.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, the BSE Metal index was top loser; the index lost 1%, followed by BSE Realty index down 1% and BSE Capital Goods index down 0.7%. However, the Mid-Cap index added 0.3% and the Small-cap index was down 0.3%.

Outside the frontline indices, the big losers in the broader market were REI Agro, Gujarat NRE Coke, Aban Offshore and Videocon Industries. On the other hand, gainers included Godrej Consumers, UCO Bank, Andhra Bank and Bajaj Holdings.