The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 11 points at 7,617, but soon slipped into negative zone. Renewed buying at lower levels saw the index bounce and touch a high of 7,687 by noon. After moving in a narrow, positive range till late noon, the index slipped again, and dropped to a low of 7,560 - a drop of 127 points from the intra-day high - towards the closing bell.Hectic buying at lower levels saw the Sensex finally close with a loss of 11 points at 7,595.Advances and declines were evenly matched - 15:15 - among the Sensex scrips today. While advancing shares logged a volume of 1.30 crore for Rs 342 crore, declining shares clocked a volume of 1.01 crore for Rs 615 crore.The sectoral indices largely declined today. The BSE Consumer Durables Index dropped over 1% to 2,358. The BSE FMCG Index was down 1% at 1,322. The BSE Metal, Bankex, Teck and PSU indices also declined.The BSE Capital Goods Index, however, moved up over 1% to 4,264. The BSE SmallCap Index and Metal indices were up marginally at 5,131 and 6,151, respectively.Declines were marginally ahead of advances - out of 2,588 scrips traded, 1,333 declined, 1,204 advanced and 51 were unchanged today.Reliance dropped Rs 4 to Rs 707. While ITC slipped Rs 22 to Rs 1,702, SBI was down Rs 2 at Rs 776.Satyam was down Rs 11 at Rs 498, and Infosys declined Rs 7 to Rs 2,263. Wipro gained 1.7% (Rs 12) to Rs 716, and TCS was up Rs 4 at Rs 1,284.Reliance Energy slipped Rs 15 to Rs 614.Grasim closed on a firm note with a gain of 2% (Rs 26) at Rs 1,258. L&T was up Rs 13 at Rs 1,324. ICICI Bank was up Rs 4 at Rs 483. Bharti, HDFC, Hero Honda, NTPC and ONGC also closed with gains.Capital Goods and metal scrips also finished with gains today.BEML zoomed 9% (Rs 58) to Rs 714. Siemens gained 3% (Rs 64) to Rs 2,300. Carborundum jumped 7% to Rs 92. KEC was up 2% at Rs 223.Sterlite gained over 3% to Rs 740. Hindalco gained Rs 7 to Rs 1,340. Tata Steel, Gujarat NRE Coke and SAIL also moved up today.Amforge Industries was locked at its 20% upper limit at Rs 233 - a gain of Rs 39.Vasishti Detergents gained 9% to close at Rs 16 after HLL announced a board meet to consider a proposal for merging Vasishti with itself in the ratio of 1:10.Reliance Capital declined 4% (Rs 20) to Rs 450.Himachal topped the volume chart with trades in over 2.77 crore shares followed by GV Films (85 lakh), Reliance Capital (75 lakh), SAIL (68 lakh) and IFSL (67.65 lakh).Reliance Capital was the most active counter with a turnover of over Rs 346 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 265 crore), VSNL (Rs 146 crore), SBI (Rs 91 crore) and Satyam (Rs 88 crore).
