After the 249-pt rally yesterday and strong gains in the US markets, the Sensex opened with a positive gap of 76 points at 15,626, and rallied to a fresh all-time intra-day high of 15,683 - up 133 points from the previous close.
The index, thereafter, moved in a narrow range of 30-odd points (15,640-15,670) for most of the trading day.
Aggressive profit-taking towards the close, mainly due to the weekend factor, saw the index slip to a low of 15,525 - down 158 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally ended with a marginal gain of 15 points at 15,565.
The BSE Metal and Realty indices surged around 1.5% each to 12,211 and 8183, respectively.
The market breadth was extremely negative - out of 2,660 stocks traded, 1,692 declined, 913 advanced and 55 were unchanged today.
INDEX MOVERS...
Tata Steel zoomed nearly 5% to Rs 715. Larsen & Toubro soared 4% to Rs 2,475, and Bharti Airtel surged 3% to Rs 923.
Mahindra & Mahindra gained 1% at Rs 823.
Reliance Communications, Ranbaxy, Grasim, Reliance Energy, HDFC and TCS pared gains towards the close.
...AND THE SHAKERS
ACC plunged nearly 4% to Rs 1,107.
Bajaj Auto, Cipla and Ambuja Cements slipped over 2% each to Rs 2,327, Rs 201 and Rs 136, respectively.
Hindalco, Hindustan Unilever and Satyam dropped around 1.8% each to Rs 182, Rs 194 and Rs 478, respectively.
Tata Motors was down 1.4% at Rs 767.
VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS
Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 158.63 crore followed by DLF (Rs 157.21 crore), Indiabulls Real Estate (Rs 152.33 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 128.34 crore) and ACC (Rs 124.41 crore).
Tata Teleservices led the volume chart with trades of around 1.62 crore shares followed by Spice Tele (1.58 crore), IFCI (1.12 crore), Petronet LNG (94.94 lakh) and IKF Technologies (69.68 lakh).
The NSE Nifty ended up 4 points at 4,566.
