The Sensex opened with a huge positive gap of 128 points at 15,772 and moved up to a high of 15,834 in morning deals. Profit-taking in early noon deals saw the index drop to 15,298 - an intra-day swing of 536 points.

The Sensex recovered almost 330 points from the day's low, and finally closed with a marginal loss of 18 points at 15,627.

The BSE Capital Goods Index dropped over 3% (449 points) to 13,560. The BSE Oil & Gas Index gained over 3% (337 points) to 10,354.

The market breadth was positive - out of 2,695 scrips traded, over 1,700 logged gains on Tuesday.

Index losers

BHEL dropped over 8% (Rs 165) to Rs 1,892. L&T declined over 4% to Rs 2,895.

M&M slipped over 6% to Rs 650. Wipro [Get Quote] was down nearly 4% at Rs 409.

Tata Steel [Get Quote], Bharti, ICICI Bank [Get Quote] and Infosys [Get Quote] also declined on Tuesday.

And gainers

HUL closed with a gain of over 4% at Rs 238. ITC was up over 2% at Rs 211.

Reliance moved up over 3% to Rs 2,345. ONGC [Get Quote] was up nearly 3% at Rs 1,010.

Reliance Energy [Get Quote] gained nearly 3% at Rs 1,288. TCS [Get Quote] advanced 3% to Rs 835.

Most active counters

GSS America was the most active counter with a turnover of Rs 468 crore followed by Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 301 crore), Reliance (Rs 243 crore), Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (Rs 212 crore) and Unitech (Rs 156 crore).