The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 13 points today, and displayed high volatility in early trades. After hitting a high of 10,272, nervousness ahead of the Railway Budget saw the index drop to a low of 10,177. The index steadied in the latter half of the day as the Rail Minister did not announce any major changes in the budget. The Sensex finally closed with a loss of 43 points at 10,201.The BSE Bankex rallied 1.8% to 5103, and the Capital Goods Index added 1% to 7172. The FMCG Index dropped 1.4% to 1915, and the TECk Index was down 1% at 2422.The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,540 stocks traded, 1,386 declined, 1,088 advanced and 66 were unchanged today.SBI rallied 2.8% to Rs 876. Larsen & Toubro spurted over 2% to Rs 2,344, and Gujarat Ambuja was up 1.6% at Rs 86.10.ICICI Bank, Tata Power and NTPC moved up over 1% each to Rs 593, Rs 517 and Rs 133, respectively.Dr.Reddy's tumbled 4% to Rs 1,308. Ranbaxy shed 1.5% to Rs 444, and Cipla dropped 1.2% to Rs 552.While HLL slipped 2.5% to Rs 242, ITC declined 1.5% to Rs 163.Hero Honda shed 2% to Rs 889. ONGC (Rs 1,177), Bajaj Auto (Rs 2,584), HDFC Bank (Rs 712), Bharti (Rs 363) and HDFC (Rs 1,363) were down 1-2% each.Satyam, Infosys and Wipro declined over 1% each to Rs 768, Rs 2,756 and Rs 516, respectively.Reliance Energy Ventures (REVL), the second of the four demerged entities of Reliance, debuted today. The stock opened at Rs 45.70, and touched a high of Rs 46 before tumbling to a low of Rs 42.90. The stock finally settled at Rs 43.65. Shareholders holding 100 shares of the company would get 7.5 shares of Reliance Energy. Banking stocks witnessed heavy buying today. Bank of India and Canara soared 7% each to Rs 136 and Rs 269, respectively. Allahabad Bank, Andhra Bank, Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank, IndusInd Bank, Karnataka Bank, Oriental Bank, Punjab National Bank and Vijay Bank finished with gains of 3-5% each. The recently listed Dynemic Product zoomed nearly 17% to Rs 33. Exide, IFCI, GTC, Dewan Housing Finance, Jayant Agro, Gujarat NRE, Navneet, IL&FS Investment and Bharat Electricals ended with sharp gains of 8-12% each. Alfa Laval dropped nearly 8% to Rs 986, and SKF India declined over 7% to Rs 283. Goodricke, KLG Systel, Sonata Software, ABG Heavy, Phoenix Lamp, Noida Toll, Gujarat Gas, Jindal Saw, National Fertilisers and SAIL were the other major losers today.UTI Bank, backed by multiple block deals, topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 659.85 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs 108.97 crore), SBI (Rs 95.31 crore), Inox (Rs 93.47 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 89.27 crore).UTI Bank also led the volume chart with trades of over two crore shares followed by REVL (85.38 lakh), IFCI (66.16), Inox (50.57 lakh) and SAIL (41.69 lakh).
