The markets reversed direction in the later part of the trading session following profit-booking in the IT space and weakness in the oil stocks.
The Sensex ended tantalisingly shy of the 19k mark at 18,978, lower by 113 points and the Nifty ended below the 5700 mark at 5691, down 33 points.
But there was outperformance on the broader market front; the midcap and smallcap indices eked out marginal gains of 10 points and eight points at 7168 and 8901 respectively.
The markets began the day's proceedings on a subdued note as the buoyancy witnessed on the previous day did not trigger follow-up buying, as one would have expected.
It may be recollected that the BSE Sensex had catapulted by 224 points in Tuesday's session on the back of a surge in the IT pack.
Paradoxically, it was the information technology pack which led the downside in the current session, in what was an apparent case of profit-booking after the stellar gains preceding the Infosys results and following the TCS numbers.
The Cabinet reshuffle exercise scheduled later in the evening to deal with the government's trust deficit and performance lethargy would have also dented the sentiment towards the close.
And the inability of the European markets to sustain their early gains would have been the final nail in the coffin.
The key benchmark indices in France, Germany and the UK were trading lower bby upto half a percent in mid-day trades.
Meanwhile, the Asian stock markets ended on an upbeat as technology shares rose after upbeat results from Apple and International Business Machines.
The key benchmark indices in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan rose upto 2
per cent, with the exception of Singapore's Straits Times and Indonesia's Jakarta Composite.
And Wall Street rose overnight, overcoming weak Citigroup results and concerns circling Apple after chief executive Steve Jobs' medical leave.
The Dow rose 50 points at 11,837 and Nasdaq Composite gained 10 points at 2,765.
Infosys weakened by 1.9% at Rs 3235 to emerge as the top loser on the BSE. Wipro lost 0.8% at Rs 475 ahead of its Q3 results on Friday and TCS, which rode to an all-time high in the previous session on the back of a consolidated net profit growth of 9.24%, shed 0.5% at Rs 1193.
However, HCL Technologies ended higher by 3.9% at Rs 507 after reporting a 21% growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 400 crore in the second quarter as against Rs 331 crore (Rs 3.31 billion) in the previous quarter, despite a revenue growth of 5% at Rs 3,888 crore (Rs 38.88 billion)from Rs 3,708 crore on q-o-q basis.
And index heavyweight RIL made further inroads into the three-figure mark to end at Rs 981, down 1.3%.
On the other hand, metals continued from where they left on Tuesday in wake of the strength on the London Metal Exchange. Sterlite strengthened by 2.7% at Rs 182, Hindalco jumped 2.6% at Rs 235 and Tata Steel added 1.1% at Rs 639.
The market breadth was marginally positive, though.
Out of 2993 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1416 advancing stocks as against 1387 declines.