Mumbai March 27: The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 137 points at 15,950 on the back of weak cues from the global markets. Weakness in the first half of the day saw the index slip to a low of 15,869.

The index, however, recovered and rebouned into the positive zone in mid-noon trades and touched a high of 16,111 - up 242 points from the day's low. The Sensex, however, could not hold gains and slipped back into red to finish with a loss of 71 points at 16,016.

The market breadth was marginally positive - out of 2,774 stocks traded, 1,490 advanced, 1,223 declined and 61 were unchanged today.

The NSE Nifty ended almost unchanged at 4,830 - up a point.

Tata Motors dropped 3.5% to close at Rs 655 as analysts raised fears of a possible slowdown in earnings following the company's buy of Jaguar Land Rover brands from Ford for $2.3 billion.

Satyam plunged 4.4% to Rs 395. SBI and Infosys tumbled 3.7% each to Rs 1,650 and Rs 1,441, respectively.

TCS shed 3% at Rs 853. Ranbaxy and Larsen & Toubro slipped 2.7% each to Rs 436 and Rs 2,964, respectively.

ICICI Bank, Reliance and Maruti were down 1% each at Rs 835, Rs 2,275 and Rs 837, respectively.

Hindalco soared 6.6% to Rs 173. Hindustan Unilever surged over 4% to Rs 244.

Cipla rallied nearly 3% to Rs 212. Bharti Airtel, ITC and DLF advanced around 2.5% each to Rs 825, Rs 200 and Rs 674, respectively.

Jaiprakash Associates and Reliance Communications moved up 2.3% each to Rs 231 and Rs 538, respectively.

BHEL gained 1.5% at Rs 1,986, and Mahindra & Mahindra was up 1% at Rs 686.

HDFC topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 909 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs 298.50 crore), Reliance (Rs 246 crore), GSS America (Rs 205.80 crore) and Nagarjuna Construction (Rs 144 crore).

Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 1.22 crore followed by Ispat Industries (1.16 crore), IFCI (93.70 lakh), Nagarjuna Construction (68.62 lakh) and Reliance Petroleum (59.12 lakh).