Sensex slips into red, drops 40pts

The Sensex has slipped into negative zone and is now down 40 points at 9820.

Cipla continues to trade with a solid gain of 9% at Rs 482.

HLL has gained 2.8% at Rs 197, and BHEL is up 2.3% at Rs 1,835.

Bharti at Rs 357, Ranbaxy at Rs 391 and Tata Steel at Rs 404 are the other significant gainers.

Larsen & Toubro and Reliance Energy have slipped 2.5% each to Rs 2,231 and Rs 597, respectively.

ONGC has shed 1.8% to Rs 1,199.

Satyam has dropped 1.6% to Rs 721, and Maruti is down 1.5% at Rs 730.

HDFC at Rs 1,369, ICICI Bank at Rs 583 and SBI at Rs 861 have declined over 1% each.

The market breadth is negative. Out of 2,443 stocks traded so far, 1,661 have declined, 710 have advanced and the rest are unchanged.

SBI leads the value chart with a turnover of Rs 60.86 crore followed by Cipla (Rs 57.86 crore), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 48.04 crore), Cummins (Rs 43.50 crore) and ONGC (Rs 42.05 crore).

Nitin Spinners tops the volume chart with trades of around 1.26 crore shares followed by Askok Leyland (72.76 lakh), Cummins (20.69 lakh), SAIL (19.16 lakh) and GV Films (16.20 lakh).