Dull day: Sensex declines 50pts

The Sensex opened flat at 17,089, owing to subdued global cues. The Asian markets had a flat session of trade. The Hang Seng added 10 points to 21,207, while Nikkei was down 18 points at 10,567.

Selling in the metal, PSU and oil & gas stocks dragged the index into the red. The index continued to display volatility albiet a narrow range. Select buying in IT and banking stocks however saw the index touch a high of 17,131.

The Sensex dipped to a low of 17,031 and finally ended at 17,052, down 50 points owing to late selling in the markets. The NSE Nifty shut shop at 5,101, down 23 points.

The market breadth was negative, out of 2,883 shares traded, 1,775 declined and 1,048 advanced on the BSE.

Among the sectoral indices, IT index advanced 1%. Scrips like Financial Technologies and Patni Computer advanced over 2% each.

The metal index on the other hand dropped 1.5%, NMDC tumbled 6% after the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Monday pegged the price band for the follow-on public offer (FPO) of the company at Rs 300-350 a share, at a discount of 12.6% to 25.11% to Monday's closing price of Rs 400.60 on BSE. Gujarat NRE Coke slipped 4.5% to Rs 83.

INDEX SHAKERS...

Jaiprakash Associates and Tata Motors dropped 3.5% each to Rs 143 and Rs 771, respectively.

Tata Motors slumped on huge volumes after German carmaker Daimler sold over 5% stake in the Indian auto major.

Hindalco, Hero Honda, DLF and Reliance Infrastructure slipped 1.5% each to Rs 162, Rs 1,874, Rs 311 and Rs 1,002, respectively.

Reliance Industries, HUL, Tata Steel and SBI were down 1% each.

...AND THE GAINERS

HDFC and HDFC Bank advanced 2% each to Rs 2,660 and Rs 1,811, respectively.

Maruti, Sun Pharma, TCS and Infosys were up 1% each.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Tata Motors topped the value chart on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 3323.96 crore. It was followed by SBI (Rs 91.56 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 83.83 crore), Reliance (82.56 crore) and Sesa Goa (Rs 75.34 crore).

Tata Motors led the volume chart as well with trades of 43.80 million shares, followed by Austral Coke(15.05 million), Shree Ashtavinayak Cinevision (14.02 million), Sanraa Media (8.57 million) and Unitech (7.51 million).