The market witnessed a highly choppy session today. Although the indices opened firm, they were in and out of the red quite a few times and ended with cuts of nearly a percent at the end of the day.

The Indian market opened in the green and touched the day’s high in initial trade on supportive global cues. The indices soon witnessed a sharp fall to enter the negative zone and were seen hovering on both sides of the neutral line. However, buying in middle-rung stocks improved sentiments in post-noon trade with the indices nearly touching the day’s highs. Profit booking surfaced once again dragging the sharply indices lower to end the session down nearly 1%.

The Sensex closed 185.76 points (0.92%) down at 19,983, below the psychological level of 20,000. The bellwether index touched a high of 20,332 and a low of 19,923 during the session. The Nifty settled above the crucial 6,000-mark at 6,027, down 48.65 points (0.80%). The index swung between a high-low of 6,127 and 6,008, respectively.

The losers outnumbered the gainers today. The Sensex had 24 declining stocks against six gainers. The Nifty ended the session with 40 losers and 10 advancing stocks. The broader indices outperformed the key benchmarks today — the BSE Mid-cap and the BSE Small-cap indexes closed with gains of 0.24% each.

The gainers on the Sensex included Hero Honda (up 1.53%), Cipla (up 1.51%) and ACC (up 0.63%). Infosys Technologies (down 3.05%), Hindalco Industries (down 2.23%) and DLF (down 2.19%) were the prominent losers today.

The top sectoral performers were BSE Healthcare (HC) (up 1.06%), BSE Auto (up 0.28%) and BSE Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) (up 0.06%). The losers in the sectoral space were led by BSE IT (down 2.22%), BSE Realty (down 1.75%) and BSE TECk (down 1.73%).

Markets in Asia finished mostly in the green on optimism gained from Citigroup’s earnings numbers. However, technology stocks were impacted by poor sales of the iPod. Meanwhile, analysts are forecasting a correction after recent gains logged by the regional bourses.

The Shanghai Composite gained 1.58%, Hang Seng rose 1.25%, Jakarta Composite was up 0.73%, KLSE Composite advanced 0.54%, Nikkei 225 was up 0.43% and Straits Times added 0.35%. On the other hand, Seoul Composite tumbled 0.97% and Taiwan Weighted lost 0.18%.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today said it would come out with the second generation (2G) spectrum pricing norms by the end of this month.

The new norms are likely to link pricing of 2G spectrum to the 3G spectrum licence after the controversial allotment of 2G spectrum in 2008, which many in the industry felt, was under-priced to help certain telecom operators.

Earnings report from Citigroup propped US financial stocks resulting in the indices closing in the green on Monday. Investors braced themselves for earning reports from Apple and IBM, which were announced after trade closed for the day. Besides, the National Association of Home Builders said its housing-market index rose three points to 16 in October, the first improvement in five months.

The Dow gained 69.63 points (0.63%) to 11,132. The S&P 500 added 5.56 points (0.47%) to 1,181. The Nasdaq added 5.03 points (0.20%) to 2,474.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers of stocks worth Rs335 crore on Monday. Domestic institutional investors were net sellers of equities worth Rs1,218 crore on the same day.