Volatile Day; Sensex drops 135pts

The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 24 points at 12,882. Fresh buying in the opening trades saw the index spurt to a high of 12,926.

The index, however, could not hold gains and soon slipped into the negative zone. Heavy selling in mid-noon trades saw the index tumble to a low of 12,655 - down 271 points from the day's high.

Selective buying towards the close saw the index recover some loss and settle at 12,724 - down 135 points.

The BSE Auto, Bankex and FMCG indices declined 1.2% each to 5314, 6195 and 2032, respectively. The BSE IT and Healthcare indices were down around 1% each at 4793 and 3638, respectively.

The market breadth was negative - out of 2,501 stocks traded, 1,423 declined, 998 advanced and the rest were unchanged.

INDEX MOVERS & SHAKERS

Bajaj Auto tumbled 3.8% to Rs 2,790. Ranbaxy shed 3% to Rs 411.

Reliance Communications slipped 2.6% to Rs 368. ITC, Larsen & Toubro and Satyam declined around 2% each to Rs 190, Rs 1,276 and Rs 441, respectively.

Reliance Energy and HDFC dropped around 1.7% each to Rs 452 and Rs 1,455, respectively.

HDFC Bank, Tata Steel, Wipro, NTPC, ACC, TCS and Reliance were the other major losers today.

Grasim gained 1.5% at Rs 2,620. Gujarat Ambuja, Hero Honda and Tata Motors finished with marginal gains.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Tech Mahindra led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 229 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 211 crore), Bajaj Auto (Rs 111.75 crore), Hindustan Zinc (Rs 97.60 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 81 crore).

SAIL topped the volume chart with trades of around 82 lakh shares followed by Nandan Exim (57 lakh), Reliance Natural Resources (34.50 lakh), Balrampur Chini (33.68 lakh) and Exide (30.55 lakh).