Sensex closes in the red on profit-booking

The Sensex this morning opened with a positive gap of 19 points at 16,905, but soon slipped in the red. It traded in a narrow range till late afternoon on either side of Tuesday's closing line. The last one hour of trade, however, saw a bout of profit-booking.

The Sensex finally ended at 16,717, down 170 points. What was more disappointing was the Nifty's close below the 5000 level within a day of having surpassed the psychological mark. The NSE Nifty ended at 4,970, down 50 points.

The BSE midcap index closed at 6,141, down 167 points and the BSE Small-cap index shut shop at 7,350, down 102 points.

The BSE IT index dipped 1.72% to 4,563. The Tech index index shed 1.98% to 3,238 points and the realty index weakened by 2.31% to 4,415.

The markets breadth was negative. Out of 2,864 stocks traded, 1,001 advanced and 1,784 declined.

INDEX MOVERS. . .

HDFC Bank surged 1.455% to Rs 1,560, Sterlite gained 1.09% to Rs 769 and Sun Pharma rose 0.58% to Rs 1,212.

. . .AND SHAKERS

Jai Prakash Associates sunk 6.34% to Rs 235, Bharti Airtel dropped 3.43% to Rs 414 and RCom declined 2.9% to Rs 308. Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever and Rel Infra lost between 1 and 2 per cent each.

Image: The Bombay Stock Exchange