Sensex drops 37 points

A day after the Sensex gained 170 points on sustained all-round buying, the market was gloomy amid a range-bound trend during intra-day trades. The Sensex saw the strong optimism vanish after adding 58 points to touch the day's high of 14023. Yet another day the Sensex could not sustain above 14000 level. The market moved in a range for most part of the morning session but eased in the afternoon on sustained selling in information technology (IT) and oil stocks to touch the intra-day low of 13885. Buying at lower levels among front-line stocks helped the Sensex to trim the losses towards the close and the index wrapped up the session at 13929, down 37 points. The Nifty shed 14 points and closed at 4120.

The broader market, however, continued to remain in the green. Of the 2,679 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,330 stocks advanced, 1,271 stocks declined and 78 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the red except the BSE Bankex, which was the biggest gainer and moved up by 1.65% at 7191. The BSE IT index slipped 1.34% at 4873, the BSE Oil & Gas index dropped 0.87% at 7291 followed by the BSE Teck index (down 0.69% at 3661) and the BSE Auto index (down 0.48% at 4997).

Among the laggards, Satyam Computer was down 2% at Rs452, Wipro declined by 1.80% at Rs534, ONGC shed 1.80% at Rs890, Infosys dropped 1.48% at Rs1,973, Reliance Communication lost 1.43% at Rs475 and Reliance Industries fell 1.42% at Rs1,598. However, select heavyweights attracted decent buying support. BHEL surged 2.54% at Rs2,519, ICICI Bank rose 1.96% at Rs887, SBI jumped 1.73% at Rs1,226, HDFC Bank added 1.43% at Rs1,010, Hero Honda moved up by 1.12% at Rs698 and Bharti Airtel gained 1.04% at Rs833.

Select IT stocks witnessed considerable selling pressure. Teledata Informatics dropped 4.76% at Rs67, Aztecsoft lost 2.38% at Rs88, Patni Computers declined by 2.20% at Rs480, Rolta India slipped by 2.06% at Rs440 and I-Flex Solutions was down 2.03% at Rs2283.

Banking stocks, however, were in the limelight. Oriental Bank surged 3.11% at Rs207, Canara Bank jumped 3.02% at Rs237, Punjab National Bank soared 2.10% at Rs546 and UTI Bank gained 1.90% at Rs535.

Over 3.69 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Petronet LNG (94.31 lakh shares), IFCI (86.05 lakh shares), Reliance Petroleum (84.83 lakh shares) and Nagarjuna Fertilizers (70.94 lakh shares).

Indiabulls Real Estate topped the value list with a turnover of Rs131 crore on the BSE followed by SBI (Rs123 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs113 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs99 crore) and Educomp Solutions (Rs86 crore).