The Sensex opened 36 points lower at 15,755, but aggressive buying in Reliance, TCS [Get Quote] and Larsen & Toubro saw the index rally to a high of 15,954 - up almost 200 points from the day's open - in noon deals.

The index, however, could not hold gains as weakness in banking and telecom stocks dragged it into negative zone in late noon trades. The index slipped to 15,655 - down almost 300 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 95 points at 15,695.

The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,717 stocks traded, 1,686 advanced, 956 declined and 75 were unchanged on Thursday.

The NSE Nifty dropped 14 points to close at 4,733.

Index shakers

ICICI Bank [Get Quote] and Ranbaxy [Get Quote] dropped over 4% each to Rs 801 and Rs 451, respectively. HDFC Bank [Get Quote] declined 3.7% to Rs 1,326.

Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] was down 3% at Rs 213. Bharti Airtel [Get Quote], Hindustan Unilever and Reliance Communications [Get Quote] slipped around 2.5% each to Rs 799, Rs 238 and Rs 484, respectively.

SBI [Get Quote] and Infosys [Get Quote] dropped nearly 2% each to Rs 1,662 and Rs 1,453, respectively.

DLF and Cipla declined over 1.5% each to Rs 600 and Rs 214, respectively.

Tata Motors [Get Quote], Wipro [Get Quote] and HDFC were down over 1% each at Rs 624, Rs 407 and Rs 2,381, respectively.

And movers

Reliance Energy [Get Quote] surged 6.5% to Rs 1,253. TCS rallied 2.8% to Rs 901, and Reliance moved up over 2% to Rs 2,468.

Larsen & Toubro and Ambuja Cements gained around 1.5% each at Rs 2,678 and Rs 122, respectively.

Tata Steel [Get Quote] was up 1% at Rs 686.

Value and volume toppers

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 375 crore followd by Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (Rs 360.80 crore), Orchid Chemicals (Rs 224 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs 206.40 crore) and Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 205.60 crore).

Reliance Petroleum led the volume chart with trades of around 2.04 crore shares followed by Sita Shree Foods (1.91 crore), Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (1.65 crore), Orchid Chemicals (98.72 lakh) and IFCI (95.92 lakh).