A high degree of jerkiness, mingled with profit booking at earlier higher levels, sent the benchmarks sea-sawing back into the red. Sell-offs was noticed in banking, oil & gas, technology and healthcare sectors. Promising global cues could not hold the jittery movement of the domestic market on the last trading day of the calendar year 2008.

Home buyers can take a sigh of relief as top home finance companies as well as tier-II firms like Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL), GIC Housing Finance Company and DHFL Vysya Housing are likely to reduce interest rates by 1-1.5 percentage points on loans up to Rs 20 lakh. They also plan to cut rates for existing borrowers, but by a lesser extent.

The government is not in favour of allowing nuclear power plant management in private hands, a fact that becomes clear from the draft civil nuclear liability bill sent for comments to various ministries.

The bill includes liabilities on part of the vendor, which will construct the plant, but there are no details of liabilities regarding operating the plant. This suggest that operations of nuclear power plants will stay in the government’s hands for now as private companies cannot be given the responsibility without proper liability blueprints ready.

The 30-share BSE Sensex traded at 9,641.79, down 74.37 points or 0.77% at this point in time. The index moved in a high/low range of 9,825.90 and 9,626.52, respectively.

The broader S&P CNX Nifty was trading down 24.40 points or 0.82% at 2995.10. The index touched a high of 2949.20 and a low of 2955.10, so far.

The market breadth on the BSE was still holding out with 145 advances, 829 declined and 103 remaining unchanged. The Nifty recorded 15 advances versus 35 declining stocks.

The broader indices fared better than the Sensex till now. The BSE Mid-cap index was up 0.57% while the BSE Small-cap index advanced 1.09%.

Speciality Papers is in the process of implementing SAP ERP solutions to put in place a single integrated information system that will provide real time and accurate information enabling the company to take accurate and timely decision-making. The stock was up 4% or 0.50 points at Rs 13.01 per share on the BSE.

Aurobindo Pharma, which received the final approval for its Stavudine capsules and oral solution from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), was trading with gains on the BSE. The stock gained 3.72% or 6 points at Rs 167.10 per share on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Satyam Computer up 5.60%, Hindalco Industries up 1.87%, Tata Motors up 1.60%, Tata Steel up 1.26% and Jaiprakash Associates up 1.26%.

The laggards of the index were Sterlite Industries down 2.36%, HDFC down 2.19%, ICICI Bank down 2.07%, Maruti Suzuki down 1.86% and Reliance Infra down 1.67%.

The top gainers on the Nifty were Satyam up 5.76%, Nalco up 2.76%, Siemens up 2.53%, Suzlon Energy up 2.30% and Unitech up 2.02%.

The main losers on the index were Idea Cellular down 5.83%, Ambuja Cement down 4.69%, Sterlite down 2.64%, HDFC down 2.39% and ICICI Bank down 2.20%.

The top sectoral movers on the BSE were Consumer Durables up 1.65%, Capital Goods up 0.46%, Metal up 0.37% and Power up 0.09%.

The sectoral losers list was led by Bankex down 1.16%, Oil & Gas down 1.01%, TECk down 0.44%, HealthCare down 0.37% and IT down 0.32%.

Markets in Europe opened on a positive note on the last trading day of 2008. UK’s FTSE 100 was up 0.93% or 40.90 points, Germany’s DAX gained 2.24% or 105.34 points and CAC of France advanced 0.65% or 21.04 points.

The Asian pack traded mixed towards the end of the session. Shanghai Composite was down 0.66%, Hang Seng surged 1.07%, Straits Times shed 0.51% and Taiwan Weighted gained 0.05%.

Markets in Japan and Korea were closed for the New Year.