Sensex moves backwards; touches 8929.4 pts

Mumbai, Jun 14: The markets closing at 8929.4 points - lowest since November 2005 - came closer to the expert prediction, that the Sensex would settle in a range of 8,500-8,800 level.

The BSE Sensex, today staged a solid recovery from lower level in the last half hour trade. It recovered from a low of 8,799.01 at 1415 hrs and gained 212.26 points to 9,011.27 at 1530 hrs. Finally closing in the red by 133 points at 8929.4 compared to the previous close of 9062.65 points, largely on account of heavy selling by the FIIs and the domestic mutual funds.

Earlier, Sensex opened in the green and jumped as much as 324.41 points to a high of 9,387.06 tracking recovery in the Asian markets showing an intra-day swing of about 790 points.

Similarly the S&P CNX Nifty shed 30.50 points or 1.1 per cent to 2,632.80.

BSE clocked a turnover of Rs 3000 crore, much higher than yesterday's Rs 2692 crore.

Major losers in the IT sector on the BSE index were- Infosys and TCS which declined sharply. Auto shares also declines further in volatile trade. Metal shares were mixed. Refinery shares surged as crude oil price dropped to a two-week low of below US Dollar 70/barrel.

Major gainers were - Hindustan Lever, ITC, Tata Power and Reliance Energy.

Refinery shares surged as crude oil price dropped to a 2-week low of below $ 70 a barrel. HPCL jumped 10 per cent to Rs 235, BPCL rose 7 per cent to Rs 321 and Indian Oil Corporation rose 1.5 per cen to Rs 319. Oil exploration major ONGC rose 1.5 per cent to Rs 999.

Tata Power jumped 7 per cen to Rs 425 and power utility Reliance Energy gained 4.4 per cen to Rs 435.

On the gainers list, top mobile services firm Bharti Airtel jumped 3 per cent to Rs 332, ICICI Bank gained 1 per cent to Rs 465. Hindustan Lever gained 1.1 per cent to Rs 190.25 and ITC gained 2.3 per cent to Rs 149.

Besides, The major losers on the index were IT majors: Infosys, which declined by 5 per cent to Rs 2,502 and TCS by 4.8 per cent to Rs 1,495.

The Auto shares were next on line, with Tata Motors losing 3 per cent to Rs 672, Maruti Udyog lost 2.3 per cent to Rs 685 and Hero Honda lost 1.7 per cent to Rs 646. However, Bajaj Auto surged in volatile trade by 4 per cent to Rs 2320. Pharmaceutical major Dr Reddy's Lab and Ranbaxy also lost by 3.55 per cent to Rs 1164.45 and 2.48 per cent to Rs 347.55 respectively.

Major indices on the S&P CNX Nifty closed in red, CNX IT was down by 13.95 per cent at 3906.9, CNX 500 was down by 10.48 per cent to Rs 2201.4, hoiwever, Midcap 200 stayed unchanged at 3239.15.

UNI