The market, in an extremely volatile trading session today, blew away its strong position towards the closing hours as selling pressure in heavyweights, notably -- Reliance, Infosys, SBI and HLL saw the index close with a loss of 51 points.
Earlier during the intra-day trades, the Sensex after opening with a positive gap of 22 points at 5,640, continued with its upsurge and spurted to a high of 5,723 on hectic buying across-the-board in mid-morning deals.
After remaining firm till mid-noon deals, the markets eased with the emergence of selling pressure in most of the counters. The sentiment, however, turned bearish as widespread selling towards the fag-end saw the index slip below the 5,600 levels to touch a low of 5,556.
The Sensex, after moving in an intra-day movement of 167 points, finally ended weak at 5,567 - down 51 points. The Nifty, too, after touching an intra-day high of 1,819, erased all its gains to end with a loss of 21 points at 1,766.
While only eight Sensex stocks registered gains, 22 declined today. Advancing shares clocked a volume of 38 lakh for Rs 229.32 crore, and declining shares accounted for a volume of 3.09 crore amounting to Rs 1,343.43 crore.
Reliance dropped nearly 2% (Rs 11) to Rs 543. HLL slipped a per cent (Rs 2) to Rs 173. ITC, however, held on to its gains, and gained 1.70% (Rs 18) to Rs 1,090.
Infosys was hammered for a second consecutive session, and ended 2% down (Rs 101) at Rs 4,857. While Satyam ended 1.60% lower (Rs 5) at Rs 289, Wipro was down a per cent (Rs 13) at Rs 1,423.
SBI declined 2% (Rs 12) to Rs 575. While HPCL lost a per cent (Rs 4) to Rs 441, MTNL was down a rupee at Rs 134. BHEL, however, pared gains towards the closing hours to finish with a marginal gain of Rs 5 at Rs 562.
Cipla slumped sharply on sustained selling pressure to end with a loss of 4.12% (Rs 51) at Rs 1,191. While Ranbaxy shed 2.71% (Rs 26) to Rs 926, Dr. Reddy's was down a per cent (Rs 10) at Rs 1,249.
L&T logged 3.21% gains (Rs 18) to Rs 566. Gujarat Ambuja added 2.72% (Rs 8) to Rs 300. ACC and Grasim, however, ended into the red from higher levels at Rs 247 (down Rs 4 or 1.46%) and Rs 1,062 (down Rs 3), respectively.
Bajaj slipped 2% (Rs 18) to close at Rs 886. While Hero Honda was marginally down by Rs 2 at Rs 496, Tata Motors closed down a tad at Rs 497.
Hindalco lost 1.66% (Rs 21) toRs 1,264. While Bharti Tele dropped 3.36% (Rs 5) to Rs 143, ICICI Bank dipped 2.36% (Rs 6) to Rs 267. Tata Power (down Rs 11 or 3% to Rs 348) ended offgains on selling pressure. Tisco closed down a per cent (Rs 3) at Rs 424. Zee lost 2.59% (Rs 3) to Rs 124.
ONGC, though shed some gains on profit-taking, ended with a decent gain of 4.66% (Rs 31) at Rs 701.
BSES and HDFC moved up a per cent each at Rs 709 (up Rs 7) and Rs 623 (up Rs 4), respectively. HDFC Bank added 1.79% (Rs 6) to Rs 370.