Profit-taking sets in; Sensex up 53pts

A fresh round of profit-taking has pushed the Sensex back to lower levels. The index is now up 53 points at 10,818.

TCS has surged 4.3% to Rs 1,839. Satyam has gained 2.4% at Rs 835, and Wipro has added 2.2% to Rs 531. Infosys has moved up 1.5% to Rs 2,960.

NTPC, Bajaj Auto and ONGC are up over 2% each at Rs 140, Rs 2,812 and Rs 1,174, respectively.

Bharti Tele, Tata Steel, SBI, HDFC Bank and Reliance Energy are the other notable gainers.

ITC and Gujarat Ambuja have slipped over 1% each to Rs 175 and Rs 98.10, respectively. ICICI Bank, Hero Honda, HDFC and Grasim are the other notabler losers among the Sensex stocks.

The market breadth is negative. Out of 2,610 stocks traded so far, 1,341 have declined, 1,193 have advanced and 76 are unchanged.

Reliance Communication Ventures (RCoVL) continues to top the value chart with a turnover of Rs 177 crore followed by SBI (Rs 115.08 crore), Gujarat Petronet (Rs 76.76 crore), Infosys (Rs 75.16 crore) and Suzlon (Rs 72.05 crore).

Gujarat Petronet leads the volume chart with trades of around 2.14 crore shares followed by Mazda (72.73 lakh), RCoVL (55.76 lakh), GTL (41.85 lakh) and Reliance Energy Ventures (33.13 lakh).