A subdued day again

It was another negative closing for the markets. The Sensex shed around 150 points from its intra-day high to end at 17529, lower by 60 points and the Nifty shut shop at 5250, down 11 points.

The morning looked good. The Sensex rose more than 100 points in early trades and the previous day's weakness seemed just like a blip on the screen. But it was a downhill ride from thereon and the sporadic attempts at a recovery were to no avail.

The sluggishness of the benchmark indices did not rub onto the broader markets though. The mid-cap index ended higher 0.2% at 6806 and the small-cap index added 0.4% at 8497. Kansai Nerolac, Wyeth and Essar Shipping were the leading lights of the mid-cap space, while the small-cap space saw the likes of Finolex, Rollatainers and Mukand hogging the limelights. And the market breadth was positive as well, with 1581 gainers as against 1190 losers.

The losers among the Sensex-30 stocks were TCS (weakened by 2.4% at Rs 780), ITC (shed 2.4% at Rs 263) and Hero Honda (lost 1.2% at Rs 1942). And index bellweather Reliance Industries was down 1.2% at Rs 1074.

On the other hand, HDFC was the leading gainer on the BSE, strengthening by 2.8% at Rs 2712. Reliance Communications appreciated by 2.6% at Rs 170 and Sun Pharma added 2.2% at Rs 1797. NTPC, HDFC Bank and Wipro were the other significant gainers.

Reliance Industries topped the value charts on the BSE with a total turnover of Rs 73.98 crore. This was followed by Tata Steel (Rs 63.37 crore), Infosys (Rs 55.35 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 54.01 crore) and DLF (Rs 52.60 crore).

DLF led the volume charts with trades of 2.57 million. It was followed by Hindalco (1.88 million), Jaiprakash Associates (1.20 million), ICICI Bank (0.95 million) and Tata Motors (0.83 million).