Stock market benchmark Sensex on Thursday crossed the 20,000-point milestone for another time, but yet again failed to close above this mark and pared the intra-day gain of over 200 points to settle just 58 points higher.
The BSE’s 30-share barometer index ended the day at 19,795.87 points, with a gain of 57.8 points, after hitting an intra-day high of 20,064.31.
This is the sixth time since October 29 that the Sensex has breached the 20K mark in intra-day trade but has not managed to close above this psychological mark even once.
The NSE’s 50-share Nifty index rose to an intra-day record high of 6,027.05, but closed at 5,954.70, gaining 14.70 points over its previous close.
The Sensex had scaled its intra-day peak of 20,238.16 points on October 30.
Buying was seen in a number of blue-chip stocks such as ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel and HDFC, but higher-level profit booking in market leader Reliance Industries and other heavyweights in latter part of the trading session limited the day’s gain.
Volatile movements were seen across the board, including large-cap as well as mid-cap and small-cap stocks, with robust buying in morning and early afternoon trade resulting into profit booking in the late afternoon trade.
Tracking positive global cues in the morning, the market opened on a strong note, but later heavy selling was seen in metal, energy, PSU and consumer durable counters.
The BSE Mid-cap index fell by 0.2 per cent, while Small-cap index gained by 0.8 per cent, as against a rise of 0.3 per cent in the Sensex.