The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 185 points at 9,462 on the back of weak cues from the US markets. The index touched a low of 9,460, and then displayed lacklustre movement in morning trades.

Buying interest picked up in mid-noon trades as the index recovered most of its losses. The Sensex finally ended with a marginal loss of 29 points 9,619.

The NSE Nifty ended at 2,926, down 9 points.

The BSE Healthcare and Metal indices were down over 1% each at 2,723 and 5,189, respectively.

The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,507 stocks traded, 1,263 declined, 1,138 advanced and 106 were unchanged on Wednesday.

INDEX MOVERS...

Maruti [Get Quote] rallied 4% to Rs 633.

ACC and Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] surged around 2.5% each to Rs 558 and Rs 77, respectively.

Tata Power [Get Quote], Bharti Airtel [Get Quote], ICICI Bank [Get Quote] and HDFC [Get Quote] advanced around 1.7% each to Rs 808, Rs 674, Rs 435 and Rs 1,530, respectively.

Reliance Communications [Get Quote] was up 1% at Rs 173.

...AND THE SHAKERS

Ranbaxy [Get Quote] plunged 5% to Rs 221, and Grasim [Get Quote] shed 4% at Rs 1,360.

Reliance Infrastructure dropped 3.7% to Rs 542. Tata Steel [Get Quote] slipped 3.4% to Rs 190.

Tata Motors [Get Quote], Sun Pharma [Get Quote] and TCS [Get Quote] declined around 2% each to Rs 136, Rs 1,096 and Rs 514, respectively.

Wipro [Get Quote], Sterlite, HDFC Bank and ONGC [Get Quote] were down around 1.5% each at Rs 222, Rs 274, Rs 933 and Rs 707, respectively.

MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS

Educomp Solutions [Get Quote] topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 227.50 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 190.50 crore), Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 180.65 crore), Reliance Infrastructure (Rs 167.25 crore) and United Spirits [Get Quote] (Rs 145 crore).

Satyam [Get Quote] led the volume chart with trades of around three crore shares followed by Unitech (2.15 crore), IFCI (2.10 crore), GVK Power (1.37 crore) and Cals Refineries (83 lakh).