Markets stage recovery after 400-point fall

Engineering major, Larsen & Toubro, along with a slightly positive European market helped domestic bourses to recover from the day's low.

The Sensex finally ended at 16836 - down 159 points (1%). In late-noon trades, the index recovered more than 285 points from the low of 16,551.

The Nifty also opened soft on extremely weak global cues and dropped below the 5,000 mark. The index touched its lowest in more than two months at 4,966 but managed to recover most of it to end at 5,060  - down 34 points.

Engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro's net profit rose to Rs 1,438 crore ($315 million) in its fiscal fourth quarter ended March from Rs 999 crore a year ago. The company, which beat the market estimate, said a pickup in execution order helped them to achieve this. The stock rebounded to end at Rs 1,606 - up 5%.

Among the sectoral indices, the capital goods index gained 2.8% to 13,597. However, the oil, IT and auto space remained soft and dropped 1-2% each.

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BSE mid-cap index outperformed the broader markets and ended down marginally at 6,927 -  down just 0.2%. Small-cap index was down 0.6%.

Hindustan Unilever gained 2.5% at Rs 240. SBI and Bharti Airtel added around 1% each.

However, DLF dropped 4% to Rs 287 in spite of good growth in the last quarter. Jaiprakash Associates dropped 3% to Rs 126.

The Reliance ADAG group stocks fell on poor Q4 results. Reliance Communications hit its 52-week low of Rs 140 and ended down 3% at Rs 142. Reliance Infrastructure dropped 3% to Rs 996. Reliance Power dropped 1.4% to Rs 143. Reliance Natural Resources shed 2.2% at Rs 46.

ACC, Wipro and Tata Motors slumped 3.3% each to Rs 863, Rs 645 and Rs 789, respectively. Other IT stocks were also in red. TCS dropped 2.4% to Rs 745 and Infosys declined 1.5% to Rs 2,615.

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Market heavyweight, Reliance, slipped 2.5% to Rs 1,016.

Tata Steel, BHEL, ONGC, Grasim and Maruti declined 1-2% each. Other losers in the market included banking stock - HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and energy shares - Tata Power and NTPC.

The market breadth was negative. Out of 2,889 stocks traded, 1,746 declined while 1,056 advanced.

Value & volume toppers

Aban Offshore topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 252.72 crore, followed by Tata Steel (Rs 186.53 cr), SBI (Rs 186.14 cr), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 171.15 cr) and Reliance (Rs 113.15 cr).

The volume chart was led by Birla Power with trades of over 12 million shares, followed by RNRL (7.41 million), Suzlon (5.93 million) and Sanraa Media (4.78 million).