Sensex drops amid choppy trades

Today domestic indices remained choppy on the back of profit bookings in index pivotal stocks. The Sensex moved 91 points up, above its previous close to open at 20,918 and advanced further to touch an intra-day high of 20,986 in the early trades. After displaying firm trend for a while the Sensex drifted into the red by mid-morning session. It tumbled sharply in the noon trades to touch the day's low of 20,662, down 324 points from its day's high. However, buying in oil, power and realty stocks helped the market to cease the fall. The Sensex witnessed hectic activity in the last hour of the trading, before selective buying saw the Nifty end in the green with a gain of seven points at 6,207. However, the Sensex dropped 99 points to close at 20,728.

The market breadth was positive, with the gainers outpacing the losers. Of the 2,881 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,576 stocks advanced, 1,283 stocks declined and 22 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE Oil & Gas index gained 2.13% at 14,127 followed by the BSE Power index (up 1.37% at 4,921) and the BSE PSU index (up 1.25% at 10,529). However, the BSE IT index dropped 2.85% at 3,987, the BSE Teck index (Down 2.17% at 3,721) and the BSE CD index (Down 1.46% at 6,120).

Among the Sensex stocks, NTPC was the leading gainer and its stock price soared 4.65% at Rs285. Among the other stocks, Reliance Industries advanced 2.82% at Rs3,216, BHEL jumped 1.59% at Rs2,474, while Reliance Communication, HDFC Bank, SBI and Ranbaxy closed with the gains 1% each. Among the laggards, Bharti Airtel slipped 6.05% at Rs907, Wipro shed 5.05% at Rs461, Maruti declined by 4.87% at Rs855, Infosys fell by 3.16% at Rs1,530 and TCS lost 2.86% at Rs961.

Over 2.22 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Porwal Auto (1.99 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.43 crore shares), Centurion Bank of Punjab (1.02 crore shares) and Reliance Petroleum (84.67 lakh shares).

RNRL registered a turnover of Rs488 crore on the BSE followed by JP Associates (Rs322 crore), RCom (Rs196 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs189 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs176 crore).