Sensex pare gains, Nifty tests 7900; BSE Realty index down 6%

NEW DELHI: The S&P BSE Sensex which rallied as much as 166 points in trade on Tuesday, pared most of its gains and was trading in a range, led by losses in Infosys, ITC, TCS and Tata Motors.

At 11:08 am, the Sensex was at 26,275.25; down 108.82 points.

The Nifty was at 7,844.15; down 40.1 points.
The whole real estate sector remained under pressure after the stock market regulator Sebi barred DLF and six of its top executives including chairman K P Singh from accessing stock markets for a period of three years.

DLF plunged as much as 24 per cent on the BSE to hit its 52-week low of Rs 111.25. The stock was trading 17 per cent lower at Rs 120.85 at 09:40 a.m.

The BSE Realty index was the top loser among other sectoral indices on the BSE, down 6 per cent followed by BSE FMCG index and IT index which were trading 0.53 per cent and 0.54 per cent lower.

Tracking the momentum, the 50-share Nifty index also pared gains and slipped below its crucial psychological level of 7900.

Reliance Industries rose as much as 2.3 per cent to hit its intraday high of Rs 980, after the oil & gas major reported a 1.7 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 5,972 crore for the three months to September.

The S&P BSE Midcap Index was up 0.29 per cent and BSE S&P Smallcap Index edged higher by 0.42 per cent.

Bajaj Auto (up 2.3 per cent), RIL (up 1.6 per cent), Axis Bank (up 1.4 per cent), Bharti Airtel (up 1.3 per cent) and SBI (up 1.2 per cent) were among the major Sensex gainers.

Hindalco (down 1 per cent), Tata Steel (down 0.73 per cent), Infosys (down 0.60 per cent), Hero MotoCorp (down 0.56 per cent) and ITC (down 0.87 per cent) were the major index losers.