A volatile day but bulls managed to pull the index around its 100-days exponential moving average (D-E-M-A) helped by a recovery in banking stocks. Even though market reversed losses, both Sensex & Nifty fail to turn positive towards the closing of the trade.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 21.04 points at 33,835.74 and the 50-share NSE Nifty declined down 16 points to 10,410.90.

SBI, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Tech Mahindra, Ambuja Cements and Bajaj Finance gained up to 3 percent.

On the other side, Tata Steel, IOC, HDFC, and HPCL were down up to 3 percent.

Banks made a major surge from lows in the 2nd half of the session. The Nifty Bank was back above 200-DMA, recovering 360 points from day’s low.

Market breadth was balanced with advance:decline ratio at 1:1 which means both bulls and bears tried their dominance on D-Street.

On the sectoral front: banks, consumer durables, IT and finance stocks advanced while oil & gas, telecom, energy, and realty stocks closed in the red.