Sensex recovers early losses, ends 208.88 points down

Mumbai, Jan 28: The Bambay Stock Exchange (BSE) sensitive index smartly recovered from early losses and finally closed the day 208.88 points down at 18,152.78 on bouts of alternate buying and selling across the sector and weak global cues. A day ahead of the Reserve Bank's third quaterly monetary policy review, the market witnessed a sharp recovery in late trade on buying in banking and auto shares as well as in index heavyweights Reliance Industries and L&T, brokers said.

The Sensex, resuming the day with a negative gap of 350 points at 18,011.99 from its previous close of 18,361.66, further declined sharply by over 900 points to touch a day's low at 17,443.29 in afternoon trade due to fall in Asian markets. Later, it recovered a huge gap but ended the day in red on weak global cues. Volumes remained low for the second day in a row.

Similarly, the broader based Nifty index of National Stock Exchange (NSE) ended the day 109.25 points down, after recovering from early negative gap of over 300 points. It touched a day's low of 5,071.00 in afternoon trade.

Banking and Auto indices on the BSE sectoral index managed to recover completely their early losses in late trade, while rest recovered but ended in red. Realty stocks were major losers of the day and reality index declined by 4.54 per cent.

The BSE market breadth was extremely negative. Out of 2,747 stocks traded, 1,851 declined and 865 advanced while 31 were unchanged today.

The BSE Mid-Cap index was down 0.0.43 pc to 7,986.68 while the BSE Small-Cap index slid by 1.13 pc to 10,303.31. Among the BSE 30-share Sensex pack, 21 declined. In early trade all were in the red.

Auto stocks staged a sharp comeback from early losses on value buying. Bajaj Auto advanced 6.22 pc to Rs 2405. It was the top gainer from the Sensex pack. It swung in a wide range of Rs 2101 and Rs 2490 during the day. While Maruti Udyog gained 4.38pc, Mahindra&Mahindra was up by 2.79 pc.

Banking shares, though trading with losses, recovered from early lows in late trade. However, State Bank of India declined 4.25 pc to Rs 2302.90. The stock hit a low of Rs 2200 in early trade.

HDFC Bank was down 1.96pc to Rs 1570, off day's low of Rs 1440 while ICICI Bank gained 1.17pc.

Reliance Industries (RIL) was down 2.07pc to Rs 2555.50. It moved in a range of Rs 2440 and Rs 2591. 4.91 lakh shares were traded on the counter on BSE. As per reports, RIL plans to foray in engineering, procurement and construction business to clock a turnover of Rs 5,000 crore in first year itself and double it in the second year.

Larsen&Toubro was down 1.55pc. It today reported a 40.10 pc surge in net profit to Rs 481.79 crore on 53.48pc rise in total income to Rs 6483.55 crore for the quarter ended December 31' 2007.

UNI