Subdued end to sizzling year, Sensex slips 40pts

The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 27 points at 13,873. Gains in early trades saw the index rally to a high of 13,929. The index, however, could not hold gains, and slipped to a low of 13,790 - down 139 points from the day's high - towards the closing bell. The Sensex finally settled with a loss of 59 points at 13,787.

The BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices, however, moved up nearly 1% each to 5805 and 6892, respectively.

The market breadth was positive - out of 2,699 stocks traded, 1,407 advanced, 1,217 declined and 75 were unchanged today.

INDEX MOVERS & SHAKERS

HLL and Gujarat Ambuja dropped over 1.5% each to Rs 217 and Rs 141, respectively.

Reliance Communications, Satyam, Cipla, ITC and ICICI Bank were down over 1% each to Rs 471, Rs 484, Rs 251, Rs 176 and Rs 890, respectively.

HDFC Bank, ONGC and Bajaj Auto were the other major losers today.

Dr.Reddy's gained 1.5% to Rs 811. Tata Steel and ACC advanced over 1% each to Rs 482 and Rs 1,086, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Debutant Nissan Copper led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 556 crore followed by Indiabulls (Rs 177 crore), Tech Mahindra (Rs 148 crore), Reliance (Rs 96 crore) and Ess Dee Aluminum (Rs 90.50 crore).

Nissan Copper also topped the volume chart with trades of around 6.11 crore shares followed by LML (49.45 lakh), IFCI (46.40 lakh), XL Telecom (44 lakh) and Pentium Infotech (39.45 lakh).