Fitch upgrade aids pull back, Sensex ends up 8pts

The Sensex opened marginally lower at 10,738, but bounced back soon to touch a high of 10,778.

The index, however, could not hold gains and slipped back into negative zone to a low of 10,646 - down 131 points from the day's high.

Fresh buying in late noon deals, helped by Fitch upgrading India's rating to investment grade, saw the index recoup all its loss and move into positive zone. The Sensex finally finished on a flat note at 10,752, up eight points.

The BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices ended marginally in the red at 4283 and 5113, respectively.

The market breadth was slightly negative - out of 2,491 stocks traded, 1,294 declined, 1,111 advanced and the rest were unchanged today.

INDEX MOVERS & SHAKERS

BHEL rallied 3% to Rs 2,104. Bharti Airtel surged over 2% to Rs 391.

Larsen & Toubro advanced 1.7% to Rs 2,249. ACC and HDFC spurted 1.3% each to Rs 854 and Rs 1,190, respectively. ITC gained 1% to Rs 169.

Hindalco slipped 2.2% to Rs 158. HDFC Bank and Cipla were down nearly 2% each to Rs 780 and Rs 232, respectively.

HLL dropped 1.5% to Rs 229. Reliance Communications and Hero Honda slipped 1.3% each to Rs 259 and Rs 696, respectively.

Reliance Energy, Tata Motors and ICICI Bank declined 1% each to Rs 448, Rs 733 and Rs 549, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 167.41 crore followed by SBI (Rs 89.20 crore), Infosys (Rs 73.81 crore), BHEL (Rs 72.22 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 65 crore).

G V Films led the volume chart with trades of around 82.23 lakh shares followed by Aftek Infosys (40 lakh), Hindalco (21.76 lakh), Gujarat Alkalies (21.63 lakh) and Unitech (20.54 lakh).