The 30-share index BSE Sensex on Friday belled the day on a positive note at 15,447, up 35.35 points, and hit an intra-day peak of 15,600. But, profit booking at higher levels and investors ignoring the advancing IIP data pulled the stock index down, and hit a low of 15,174.

The industrial output surged 1.4 per cent during April 2009 as compared to a fall of 0.75 percent in March 2009.

SMC Global Vice-President Rajesh Jain said, “The market did not react to positive IIP data as it is saturated at the moment. Investors should not expect a rally for so long. It is only a normal correction, which happened today. Going forward, one can expect corrections in the market.”

Finally, the Sensex ended the day after a loss of over 173.53 points at 15,238. The broad-based NSE Nifty lost 54.30 points (1.17%) at 4,583.40. Nifty touched an intra-day high of 4,693.20 and an intra-day low of 4,566.15.

On a weekly basis, Sensex gained 132 points, its 14th successive weekly gain.

Secondline stocks remained weak and backed the downfall. Mirroring widespread selling BSE Midcap and Smallcap were down by 2.10% and 2.21% respectively.

Most of the sectoral indices remained weak during the day. The BSE Realty, Auto, Capital goods, Consumer durables and Bankex index was down more than 2% each.

The only gainer among the sectoral indices was BSE Metal, which was up by nearly 2%.

At the close of session, investors were poorer by Rs 68,000 crore with BSE’s market capitalization now at Rs 49.8 lakh crore.

Out of 30 sensex stocks, 26 closed the day negatively. In the broader market, losers’ outnumbered winners by a margin of nearly 3:1 with 2,020 stocks ending lower compared to 706 closing higher.

Among the sensex stocks, Ranbaxy (6.03%), DLF (5.80%), RCom (4.38%), Mah & Mah (3.92%), Tata Motors (3.69%), and Rel Capital (3.58%) were the top losers while RIL (2.48%), Sterlite Industries (India) (2.26%), ONGC (0.80%), and Tata Steel (0.78%) were the top gainers.

The figures from SEBI showed that foreign funds bought shares worth $209.4 million on Friday

Japanese benchmark index Nikkei surged 154.49 points to end at 10,135.82. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 98.65 points to close at 18,889.68 and China’s Shanghai Composite dropped 53.56 points to settle at 2,743.76.

Markets across Europe were doubtful and largely flat, with the FTSE in Britain trading 17.32 points lower at 4,444.55 points, and its French peer CAC 40 ruling 3.81 points down at 3,331.13 points.