The Indian bourses opened in the positive at 17,604 but soon slipped into the red owing to lack of buying activity and no major trigger to boost the sentiment. The index exhibited lacklustre movement for major part of the trading day. The benchmark index towards the end slipped deeper into the red to touch a low of 17,509, down 149 points from the day's high.
The Sensex finally ended at 17,540, down 75 points.
The NSE Nifty shut shop 5,244, down 18 points.
Among the sectoral indices, the realty index advanced 3.5% at 4,082 while the BSE IT index declined 2% at 4,956.01.
The market breadth was positive, out of 2,963 shares traded, 1,694 advanced and 1,204 declined on the BSE.
INDEX SHAKERS...
IT scrips like Infosys and TCS were down over 2% each at Rs 2,464 and Rs 700, respectively.
HDFC, Reliance Communications and Maruti declined 1.5% each to Rs 2,600, Rs 181 and Rs 1,432, respectively.
ICICI Bank, Wipro, Bharti Airtel, Hindalco and Sterlite were down 1% each.
...AND THE MOVERS
DLF advanced 4% to Rs 391. Grasim Industries added 3% at Rs 2,754. Sun Pharma and Jaiprakash Associates advanced 2% each to Rs 1,574 and Rs 161, respectively.
VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS
Satyam Computers topped the value chart on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 207.11 crore, followed by Aban Offshore (Rs 150.23 crore), Bombay Dyeing (Rs 147.81 crore) and DLF (Rs 146.44 crore).
Cals Refineries led the volume chart with trades of 82.18 million shares on the BSE. It is followed by Satyam Computer (18.61 million), Karuturi Global (18.02 million), IFCI (14.83 million) and Unitech (11.91 million).