The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 185 points at 9,462 on the back of weak cues from the US markets. The index touched a low of 9,460, and then displayed lacklustre movement in morning trades.
Buying interest picked up in mid-noon trades as the index recovered most of its losses. The Sensex finally ended with a marginal loss of 29 points 9,619.
The BSE Healthcare and Metal indices were down over 1% each at 2,723 and 5,189, respectively.
The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,507 stocks traded, 1,263 declined, 1,138 advanced and 106 were unchanged today.
INDEX MOVERS...
Maruti rallied 4% to Rs 633.
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ACC and Jaiprakash Associates surged around 2.5% each to Rs 558 and Rs 77, respectively.
Tata Power, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank and HDFC advanced around 1.7% each to Rs 808, Rs 674, Rs 435 and Rs 1,530, respectively.
Reliance Communications was up 1% at Rs 173.
...AND THE SHAKERS
Ranbaxy plunged 5% to Rs 221, and Grasim shed 4% at Rs 1,360.
Reliance Infrastructure dropped 3.7% to Rs 542. Tata Steel slipped 3.4% to Rs 190.
Tata Motors, Sun Pharma and TCS declined around 2% each to Rs 136, Rs 1,096 and Rs 514, respectively.
Wipro, Sterlite, HDFC Bank and ONGC were down around 1.5% each at Rs 222, Rs 274, Rs 933 and Rs 707, respectively.
MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS
Educomp Solutions topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 227.50 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 190.50 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs 180.65 crore), Reliance Infrastructure (Rs 167.25 crore) and United Spirits (Rs 145 crore).
Satyam led the volume chart with trades of around three crore shares followed by Unitech (2.15 crore), IFCI (2.10 crore), GVK Power (1.37 crore) and Cals Refineries (83 lakh).