The Sensex opened 86 points lower at 14,980. The index touched a day's high of 15,088 due to fresh buying in health care stocks.

Unabated selling in consumer durables, banking, realty and IT stocks pushed the index into a negative zone and touched a day's low of 14,645 - down 443 points from Tuesday's high. 

The index recovered smartly in late noon deals and finally ended with a loss of  177 points at 14,889.

The market breadth was negative -- out of 2,692 stocks traded, 1,653 declined, 962 advanced and 77 were unchanged.

The NSE Nifty ended  with a loss of  40 points at 4,461.

INDEX SHAKERS. . .

HDFC [Get Quote] plunged 4.8% to Rs 2,207, while ONGC [Get Quote] tumbled 4.7% to Rs 873.  HDFC Bank declined 4.5% to Rs 1,184.

TCS [Get Quote] slipped 3.9% to Rs 916 and Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] lost 3.5% to Rs 184. Infosys [Get Quote] dropped around 3% at Rs 1,904.

Satyam [Get Quote] was down 2.8% to Rs 491. ITC and Reliance Infrastructure declined 2.6% each at Rs 207 and Rs 1,038, respectively.

ICICI Bank [Get Quote], Wipro [Get Quote] and SBI [Get Quote] were the other major losers.

. . .AND THE MOVERS

Ranbaxy [Get Quote] surged 6.5% to Rs 526, Cipla gained 2.1% at Rs 206.

Reliance moved up 1.7% at Rs 2,163. HUL advanced over 1% at Rs 232.

Maruti [Get Quote] added 0.8% to Rs 736. ACC, BHEL and Hindalco [Get Quote] were up 0.5% each at Rs 613, Rs 1,375 and Rs 176, respectively.
 
MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS

Reliance led the value chart with a turnover of  Rs 281.98 crore followed by Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 261.73 crore), Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (Rs 231.74 crore), Ranbaxy (Rs 213.44 crore) and Anu Labs (Rs 167.13 crore).

IFCI topped the volume chart with trades of around 1.85 crore shares followed by Reliance Petroleum (1.36 crore),  Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (1.34 crore), Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote](1.31 crore) and Spice Telecom(1 crore).