The journey of the 30-share Sensex to a new milestone of 21K was short-lived on Tuesday as profit-booking prevailed at higher levels, pulling down the index to under 20K level before close.

Having touched an all-time intra-day high of 21,077.53 points in early trades, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) benchmark wiped out these gains to close at a flat note at 20,873.33 points, registering a minor gain of 60.68 points or 0.29%.

The broader S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) gained 8.75 points, or 0.14%, to close at 6,287.85 points.

Early in the day, mixed global cues helped the Sensex open with a gap of 157 points before witnessing severe selling pressure across the sectors. In the new year, the Sensex touched a new high for the fourth time in six trading sessions.

The Sensex crossed the 20K mark in the intra-day trades on October 29, 2007, but it took 31 more trading sessions to actually close above 20K level on December 11, 2007.

The Sensex took 49 sessions to breach 21K level in the intra-day trades. The small- and the mid-cap stocks were severely hit with the BSE mid cap losing 2.82% and the BSE small cap index losing 3.28% on Tuesday. As a result, though the Sensex may have closed in the positive territory the overall market remained bearish with only 541 stocks advancing as against 2,369 stocks, which declined and 12 stocks remained unchanged.

Continuous selling was witnessed in the metals and consumer durables segment which led BSE Metal index to shed 603.62 points or 3% to close at 19,538.34 points followed by BSE CD (consumer durable) which lost 198.52 points or 2.93% to close at 6,569.64 points. This was followed by BSE PSU, which lost 186.79 points or 1.70 % to close at 10,801.50 points.

However, the laggards for some time the IT and the tech companies witnessed buying at the lower level which helped their respective indices to gain around 1% each.

Gopal Agarwal, CIO, Equity of Mirae Asset Management, said, ?As the indices reach towards any psychological mark, we witness selling pressure. Metal and consumer durables stocks which rallied for some time now witnessed some profit booking at higher levels.??