Sensex closes in the red on profit-booking

The Sensex this morning opened with a positive gap of 19 points at 16,905. It soon slipped in the red and traded in a narrow range till late afternoon on either side of yesterday's closing line. The last one hour of trade, however, saw about of profit-booking. The Sensex finally ended at 16,717, down 170 points. What was more disappointing was the Nifty's close below the 5000 level within a day of having surpassed the psychological mark. 

The BSE midcap index closed at 6,141, down 167 points and the BSE Small-cap index shut shop at 7,350, down 102 points.

The BSE IT index dipped 1.72% to 4,563. The TECk index shed 1.98% to 3,238 points and the realty index weakened by 2.31% to 4,415.

The markets breadth was negative. Out of 2,864 stocks traded, 1,001 advanced and 1,784 declined.

INDEX MOVERS...

HDFC Bank surged 1.45% to Rs 1,560, Sterlite gained 1.09% to Rs 769 and Sun Pharma rose 0.58% to Rs 1,212.

...AND SHAKERS

Jaiprakash Associates sunk 6.34% to Rs 235, Bharti Airtel dropped 3.43% to Rs 414 and Reliance Communications declined 2.9% to Rs 308. Mahindra & Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever and Reliance Infrastructure were down between 1 and 2% each.

MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS

Jaiprakash Assoicates led the combined value chart on the BSE and the NSE with a total turnover of Rs 2,030 crore. It was followed by Suzlon (Rs 1,284 crore), Reliance (Rs 844 crore), DLF (Rs 675 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 512 crore).

Suzlon topped the combined volume chart with trades of around 132.69 million shares followed by Jaiprakash Associates (85.33 million), Unitech (44.18 million), Ispat Industries (38.01 million), IFCI (37.50 million).