Market ends choppy

With no possible cues to direct the market and a lack of buying support in the last couple of sessions, the Sensex opened marginally in the green before slipping into the negative terrain. As buying intensified among metal, capital goods, banking and auto stocks, the Sensex entered into positive territory and touched the intra-day high of 13956. However, heavy to moderate selling in IT, consumer durables and auto stocks dragged the market into the red again and the Sensex touched the day's low of 13741. The Sensex finally closed with a loss of 128 points at 13765 while the Nifty shed 42 points to close at 4069.

The breadth of the market was extremely negative. Of the 2,632 scrips that traded on the BSE, 1,682 stocks declined, 879 stocks advanced and 71 stocks ended unchanged. All the 11 sectoral indices of the BSE ended in negative territory. The BSE IT index led the slump and shed 1.61% at 4933. The BSE Teck index, the BSE Auto index, the BSE CD index and the BSE HC index lost over 1% each.

Among index heavyweights, Hero Honda dropped 3.51% at Rs680, SBI declined by 3.36% at Rs1,082, Infosys lost 1.79% at Rs2,002, Dr Reddy's Lab shed 1.75% at Rs691, Wipro slumped by 1.51% at Rs546, Reliance Energy slipped by 1.35% at Rs506 and Cipla dipped by 1.35% at Rs112. However, ACC managed to report gains and moved up by 2.68% at Rs886 while Grasim, Tata Steel and L&T gained marginally.

Select IT stocks took a heavy beating on the bourses. Tech Mahindra tanked by 4.26% at Rs1,556, Mphasis fell by 3.63% at Rs314, i-Flex lost 3.24% at Rs2,277 and Financial Technologies was down 3.01% at Rs1,902.

Over 2.31 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Tata Teleservices (72.16 lakh shares), Nagarjuna Fertilizers (65.71 lakh shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (64.97 lakh shares).

ICRA was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs260 crore followed by India Bulls (Rs229 crore), Tech Mahindra (Rs166 crore), Advanta (Rs137 crore) and Indiabulls Real Estate (Rs134 crore)