The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 36 points at 14,490, and zoomed to a high of 14,501 in early trades. The index, thereafter, slipped into red and exhibited lacklustre movement for major part of the trading day.

A fresh bout of selling late in the day saw the index slip to a low of 14,326 -- down 175 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally settled at 14,363 -- down 91 points.

NSE Nifty touched a new intra-day high of 4291, but eventaully ended with a loss of 32 points at 4246.

The BSE FMCG and Oil & Gas indices dropped 1.3% each to 1896 and 7753, respectively. The Auto, Bankex and Teck indices were down over 1% each to 4832, 7578 and 3691, respectively. The Metal index, however, gained 1% at 10,639.

The market breadth was fairly negative -- out of 2,642 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,638 declined, 928 advanced and 76 were unchanged on Wednesday.

Movers & Shakers

Tata Motors, ITC, Reliance Communications and Ranbaxy slipped 2.5% each to Rs 708, Rs 166, Rs 511 and Rs 390, respectively.

Maruti shed 1.8% to Rs 815. Gujarat Ambuja, ONGC, SBI and ICICI Bank dropped around 1.5% each to Rs 115, Rs 913, Rs 1,306 and Rs 917, respectively.

Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Dr.Reddy's, Infosys and Grasim were down 1% each to Rs 849, Rs 1,756, Rs 655, Rs 1,926 and Rs 2,504, respectively.

Tata Steel soared 5% to Rs 659. Reliance Energy surged 3.5% to Rs 570.

HLL rallied over 2% to Rs 198. BHEL gained 1.5% at Rs 2,718, and Hero Honda added 1% to Rs 694.

Most Active Counters

Reliance Capital topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 205 crore followed by Educomp Solutions (Rs 195.50 crore), HDFC (Rs 182 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 168 crore) and Unitech (Rs 126 crore).

Reliance Natural led the volume chart with trades of around 2.40 crore shares followed by Idea (76.85 lakh), Tata Teleservices (70 lakh), IFCI (64.20 lakh) and Reliance Petro (54.20 lakh).