Mkt sees 2nd highest ever turnover, Sensex ends 72 pts down

The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty closed the session with marginal losses on Wednesday ahead of settlement day for July contract. The market saw the second highest turnover today of Rs 3.01 lakh crore while the highest ever turnover stood at Rs 3.29 lakh crore that traded on February 23, 2012.

Benchmarks erased all yesterday's gains as the market has not been getting any action on government's reforms. Even the stocks exclusion from the F&O segment dented sentiment.

Anshul Bhargava, head of institutional derivative research at MF Global, attributes the depression in several F&O counters today to the exclusion of 51 stocks from the segment by the NSE. He believes this decision has adversely impacted sentiment, and could cause some volatility going forward.

The 30-share BSE benchmark went down 72.03 points to close at 16,846.05 after recovery of 110 points from day's low of 16,736.60. The 50-share NSE benchmark fell 18.60 points to 5,109.60.

July series will end tomorrow and the market has not moved much on either side, falling just 0.5% compared to last expiry as nothing major has happened in case of first quarter earnings, monsoon and even post presidential election expectations. So now traders may be preparing for next series i.e. August, when the Reserve Bank of India will declare its monetary policy review on July 31.

Strength in European markets too helped market trim losses in late trade. France's CAC and Germany's DAX gained 0.6% each while Britain's FTSE was up 0.3%.

Back home, the Indian rupee, which touched an intraday low of 56.41 a dollar, recovered to 56.20 against the US dollar at 15:31 hours IST. It was down by 9 paise compared to previous close.

Fast moving consumer goods major Hindustan Unilever tanked 2.4% on profit booking as the stock had rallied 7.5% yesterday after strong numbers in Q1 while cigarette major ITC gained 1.6% ahead of quarterly earnings tomorrow.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries and engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro were down around 1%.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India declined over 1% whereas its rivals ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank gained just 0.2% each.

Telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular moved down 1.5%-2.3%.

Software services exporter Wipro dropped another 2% after a forecast of flattish growth for September quarter while its rival TCS was up 0.3%.

Jindal Steel topped the selling list, falling more than 4% after disappointing numbers in Q1. Hindalco, Sterlite Industries and Tata Steel were down 1.7%-2.4%.

Ahead of earnings tomorrow, state-owned power equipment manufacturer BHEL declined 0.7% while cement stocks like Ambuja Cements and ACC gained 3.66% and 0.5%, respectively.

HCL Tech, country's fourth largest software services exporter was the top gainer since initial trade today, rising 7% as its net profit rose by 42% QoQ to Rs 854 crore in the quarter ended June 2012.

In the second line shares, Marico has touched a 52-week high of Rs 197, which gained 3.6% ahead of earnings that scheduled for August 3.

Yesterday the National Stock Exchange decided to remove 51 stocks from F&O segment. These are Educomp Solutions, Lanco Infratech, Sterlite Tech, JSW ISPAT Steel, S Kumars Nationawide, SREI Infra, Jet Airways and Praj Industries, which fell 5%-9.6%.

Declining shares outnumbered advancing by 1678 to 1064 on the BSE.