The Indian market, which traded in the negative zone for a major part of the day, sprang a surprise to recoup in the last half-hour and close with little gains.

The market opened weak this morning on lacklustre global cues. The pre-open call option, introduced by the stock exchanges today, witnessed contrasting trends. While the Sensex opened in the red, the Nifty opened with gains. However, trends normalised after regular trade began.

Opening with marginal gains, the market soon dipped into the red on profit taking. A sharply volatile session saw the indices trade in a narrow range in the negative terrain till the post-noon session. A green opening of the key European markets gave the much-needed boost helping the domestic market closing near the high-point of the day.

The Sensex finally ended the day up 43.84 points (0.22%) at 20,169. The index touched a high of 20,229 and a low of 19,870, dipping below its psychological level of 20,000. The Nifty settled at 6,088, up 25.30 points (0.42%). The benchmark touched an intraday high of 6,115 and a low of 5,985, below the 6,000 mark.

The market breadth was a mixed bag today. The Sensex closed with 17 losers and 13 advancing stocks while the Nifty settled with 28 stocks in the positive zone while 22 ended lower. The broader indices underperformed the key barometers today. The BSE Mid-cap index tanked 0.47% while the BSE Small-cap index shed 0.15%.

The top Sensex gainers were TCS (up 2.98%), NTPC (up 1.70%), Tata Steel (up 1.56%), ONGC (up 1.42%) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) (up 1.19%). Today’s laggards included ACC (down 2.86%), Bharti Airtel (down 2.21%), Jaiprakash Associates (down 1.80%), Tata Power (down 1.61%) and Cipla (down 1.54%).

The sectoral space was dominated by BSE IT (up 1.28%), BSE Oil &Gas (up 0.84%) and BSE Realty (up 0.72%). The sectoral losers included BSE Consumer Durables (down 1.02%), BSE Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) (down 0.18%) and BSE Power (down 0.17%).

The country's two premier bourses — National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) — today introduced the 15-minute special pre-open trading session, a mechanism under which investors can bid for stocks before the market opens. The mechanism, known as 'pre-open session call auction', will last for 15 minutes (from 9:00-9:15 am).

While, this system has been started to reduce the quantum of volatility — typically visible in the first few minutes of trade — but going by the first day's action this special session was more volatile than the normal trading session.

Markets in Asia ended in a sea of red on concerns about the pace of the global economy recovery. The stronger dollar led to easing of commodity prices, impacting material stocks in the region. The foreclosure crisis worrying US mortgage lenders and servicers also weighed on the region’s banking stocks.

The Shanghai Composite was down 0.54%, Hang Seng was down 1.21%, Jakarta Composite was down 0.84%, KLSE Composite was down 0.61%, Nikkei 225 was down 0.02%, Straits Times was down 0.72%, Seoul Composite was down 1.41% and Taiwan Weighted tumbled 1.76%.

India will launch its first-ever offer of shale gas areas for exploration by end 2011, even as it targets at least a billion dollar of investment commitments from the ongoing auction of conventional oil and gas blocks.

Speaking at a roadshow organised to promote 34 oil and gas blocks offered in the 9th round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), oil secretary S Sundareshan said potential of shale gas in India is being examined by oil regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).

The US markets ended mixed on Friday with financial stock tanking the most. Stocks rose in early trade after Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke’s statement but tardy economic data results in the indices paring their gains. Mr Bernanke made a case for the central bank to take new initiatives to spur economic growth, stating that inflation is likely to remain below the Fed's 2% target and the economy is on a course to grow too slowly to bring down unemployment. His comments were seen as confirmation that the Fed will likely announce after its 2-3 November meeting that it will resume buying US Treasury bonds.

The Dow lost 31.79 points (0.29%) to 11,062. The S&P 500 gained 2.38 points (0.20%) to 1,176. The Nasdaq added 33.39 points (1.37%) to 2,468.

Institutional investors — both foreign as well as domestic — were net sellers of stocks on Friday. Foreign institutional investors offloaded stocks worth Rs112 crore and domestic institutional investors sold equities worth Rs1,053 crore.

Anil Ambani group company Reliance Communications (RCom) (up 0.11%) has added two million wireless subscribers both on its GSM and CDMA platforms in September, taking its total customer base to over 117 million.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in August 18.18 million new users were added, taking the total wireless subscribers in the country to 670.60 million. TRAI is yet to release the overall September figures.

Powersoft Global Solution (up 2.70%) has launched the first automated, off-the-shelf, radio frequency identification (RFID) solution for small and medium enterprises. The offering is an integrated approach to RFID tracking. The solution includes three components, several new versatile UHF RFID tags, three new UHF Gen 2 hand-held readers and RFID Manager, an RFID software solution.

The company’s RFID solution is a valuable option for any business in the SME sector seeking to implement affordable data synchronization and RFID tracking.

Sterlite Industries (down 1.12%) has won a reprieve till mid-December on closure of its copper smelting plant, with the Supreme Court asking the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government and pollution control authorities to state why action was taken against the company.

Hearing Sterlite’s plea that the Madras High Court has ordered closure of its plant in Tuticorin despite compliance with green norms, the apex court issued notices to the Centre, the Tamil Nadu government and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.