Volatile markets end flat

Indian share markets ended marginally lower in trades on Wednesday amid a very high voaltile trading sesasion. The Sensex advanced 5  points to provisionally close at 17,248 and the 50-share Nifty slid 4 points to shut shop at 5,240 levels.

Today's trading session was characterised by high volatility. The Sensex touched the high of 17,319 and the low of 17,076 in the intra-day deals.
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(Updated at 1500 hours)

Market which had recovered in late noon deals failed to sustain gains because of selling pressure in index heavyweight Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel and software major TCS.

The Sensex was down 64 points at 17,179 while the Nifty was down 21 points at 5,222.

Among the sectoral indices on the BSE, metal, capital goods, oil and gas were the top losers down over 1% each.

In the Sensex pack, index heavyweight Reliance Industries was down 1.5% followed by Bharti Airtel down 2.4% and TCS fell 1.2%.

The market breadth turned weak with 1,533 losers and 1,179 gainers on BSE.