IT, banking shares pull down Sensex

Continuing its yesterday pullback coupled with strong cues fromm global markets, the Sensex opened with a positive gap of 110 points at 17,069. The index soon spurted to a high of 17,121 and thereafter exhibited firm trend till noon trades.

Yesterday's trend changer - the European markets - today opened a subdued note  which triggered a round of selling in our markets. The index soon slipped into red and went on to touch a low of 16,764 - down 357 points from the day's high - towards the end of the day. The Sensex finally ended in red at 16,807, down 152 points.

The NSE Nifty touched a high of 5,077, and then tumbled to a low of 4,973, down 104 points from the day's high. The index finally settled with a loss of 42 points at 4,986.

The Asian markets, however, ended on a firm note. The Hang Seng surged 430 points to 21,241. Nikkei advanced 101 points to 9,799, and the Shanghai Composite added 25 points to 2,779.

Metal and Healthcare stocks were the prominent gainers today, while IT stocks declined on the backdrop of rising rupee. The BSE Metal index surged 2.3% to 14,482, and the Healthcare index gained 1.3% at 4,412. On the other hand, the IT index slipped 2% to 4,421, and the Oil & Gas index shed 1% at 10,161.

The market breadth was marginally positive - out of 2,843 stocks traded, 1,420 advanced, 1,331 declined and the rest were unchanged today.

Sterlite soared 5.5% to Rs 816. Hindalco moved up 1.6% to Rs 127, and Tata Steel added 1.2% to Rs 517.

Jaiprakash Associates surged 2.3% to Rs 236. BHEL was up 1.5% at Rs 2,454.

Wipro plunged over 4% to Rs 573. TCS tumbled 3.3% to Rs 593, and Infosys shed 2.5% at Rs 2,252.

Maruti dropped nearly 4% to Rs 1,537. SBI slipped 2.7% to Rs 2,101.

Grasim, Reliance Communications and ICICI Bank declined over 2% each to Rs 2,451, Rs 262 and Rs 917, respectively. Mahindra & Mahindra too was down nearly 2% at Rs 893.

Reliance dropped 1.5% to Rs 2,099, and Reliance Infrastructure was down 1% at Rs 1,269.

Bharti Airtel topped the combined (BSE+NSE) value chart with a turnover of Rs 1,571 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 762 crore), SBI (Rs 717 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 632 crore) and HDIL (Rs 615 crore).

Ispat Industries led the volume chart with trades of around 69.56 million shares followed by Unitech (56.64 million), Bharti (43.82 million), Kingfisher Airlines (42.21 million) and IFCI (29.61 million).