By IANS
Mumbai : The Indian equities market ended the day flat on sustained selling pressure in an extremely volatile market on the first day of the financial year 2008-09.
The sentiment was also dampened by the fact that some traders stayed away from the market to protest change in tax treatment of the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) that has come into force from Tuesday.
With mixed cues from emerging markets, Indian equity started the day with a positive gap but soon slipped into red and was not able to recover till the end of the trading session.
The 30-share benchmark of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) sensitive index (Sensex) opened at 15,771.72 points and notched a high of 15,834.05 before closing at 15,626.62 points. It went down by 17.82 points at the day’s close or 0.11 percent.
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) S&P Nifty, which opened at 4,735.65 points, closed at 4,739.55 points, after touching the day’s high of 4,800.75 points.
At day’s close it went up by marginal 5.05 points or 0.11 percent.
The BSE Midcap index, which closed at 6,395.10 points, slid by 32.72 points or 0.51 percent.
BSE Smallcap index, which closed at 7,861.76 points, went up by 20.14 points or 0.26 percent.
However, on BSE, the market breadth was positive with low trading volumes: 1,728 shares advanced, 920 declined and 47 maintained status quo.
The top gainers of the day were HUL at Rs.238.55 up by 4.31 percent, Reliance Industries at 2,345.1 gained 3.56 percent, Reliance Energy at Rs.1,288.35l gained 2.97 percent.
The top losers of the day included BHEL at Rs.1,891.85 down by 8.01 percent, Mahindra and Mahindra at Rs.650.3 down by 6.52 percent and Wipro at Rs.409 slid by 3.83 percent.