The Sensex opened almost flat at 14,290 - down seven points. The index moved up to a high of 14,347, but soon slipped into red owing to lack of buying support at higher levels.
The index, thereafter, exhibited lacklustre movement of most part of the trading day. Significant weakness towards the close owing to the futures & options expiry of August series saw the index slide to a low of 14,002 - down 345 points from the day's high.
The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 248 points at 14,048.
The market breadth was fairly negative - out of 2,716 stocks traded, 1,720 declined and 899 advanced today.
INDEX SHAKERS...
Reliance shed 3.5% at Rs 2,074.
Reliance Infrastructure, Tata Motors and BHEL tumbled over 3% each to Rs 935, Rs 410 and Rs 1,629, respectively.
TCS, Reliance Communications and Larsen & Toubro slipped around 3% each to Rs 794, Rs 385 and Rs 2,502, respectively.
Wipro dropped 2.7% to Rs 414. ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, DLF and HDFC declined around 2% each to Rs 634, Rs 241, Rs 468 and Rs 2,248, respectively.
Tata Steel, SBI, Mahindra & Mahindra and HDFC Bank were down around 1.5% each at Rs 572, Rs 1,309, Rs 567 and Rs 1,215, respectively.
...AND THE MOVERS
There were no significant gainers among the index stocks today.
MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS
Reliance Capital topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 266 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 249.40 crore), Nutek India (Rs 157.80 crore), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 136.70 crore) and Reliance Natural Resources (Rs 114 crore).
Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 1.24 crore shares followed by Nutek India (84.25 lakh), Chambal Fertilisers (63.30 lakh), IFCI (56 lakh) and Ispat Industries (53.15 lakh).
