The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 87 points at 17,687. Fresh buying in late morning deals saw the index move up to a high of 17,736 - up 136 points from the previous close.

The index, however, could not hold gains and slipped into the negative zone. The index dropped to a low of 17,457 - down 279 points from the day's high in late noon deals. The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 109 points at 17,491.

The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,776 stocks traded, 1,634 advanced, 1,104 declined and 38 were unchanged on Monday.

The NSE Nifty slipped 36 points and settled at 5,192.

Index shakers

Wipro [Get Quote], SBI [Get Quote] and HDFC [Get Quote] plunged nearly 2.5% each to Rs 490, Rs 1,779 and Rs 2,710, respectively.

DLF slipped over 2% to Rs 705. Mahindra & Mahindra and TCS [Get Quote] shed 1.8% each at Rs 678 and Rs 924, respectively.

Ambuja Cements dropped 1.5% to Rs 111. Satyam [Get Quote], Hindalco [Get Quote] and Reliance Communications [Get Quote] declined 1.3% each to Rs 488, Rs 183 and Rs 554, respectively.

NTPC was down over 1% at Rs 199.

And the movers

Cipla gained nearly 1.5% at Rs 216.

Tata Steel [Get Quote], Grasim [Get Quote] and ACC were the other gainers among the index stocks.

Most active counters

Titagarh Wagons topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 225 crore followed by HDFC (Rs 198.50 crore), Reliance (Rs 197.25 crore), Unitech (Rs 167 crore), Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] (Rs 154.80 crore).

Tata Teleservices [Get Quote] led the volume chart with trades of around 1.86 crore shares followed by Kashyap Technologies (1.47 crore), Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (1.40 crore), IFCI (1.23 crore) and Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (1.09 crore).