Mumbai May 23: The Sensex opened 52 points higher at 16,959 due to positive closing in the US markets, the index touched a high of 17,054 - up 147 points from the previous close.

The index, however, could not hold gains and soon slipped into the negative zone. The index dropped to a low of 16,626 - down 428 points from the day's high in late noon deals. The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 257 points at 16,650.

The market breadth was negative - out of 2,790 stocks traded, 796 advanced, 1,922 declined and 72 were unchanged today.

The NSE Nifty settled with a loss of 79 points at 4,946 points.

ITC plunged 4.2% to Rs 214. Tata Motors tumbled 3.6% to Rs 638.

Jaiprakash Associates declined 3.4% to Rs 238, and Larsen & Toubro slipped 2.5% to Rs 2,845.

Reliance Infrastructure, ONGC, TCS and Reliance were down 2.4% each to Rs 1,291, Rs 902, Rs 934 and Rs 2,555, respectively.

Hindalco was down over over 2.3% to Rs 193.

Reliance Communications, SBI and Ambuja Cements dropped 2.1% each to Rs 572, Rs 1,573 and Rs 102, respectively.

ICICI Bank and ACC shed 1.9% to Rs 864 and Rs 667, respectively.

Infosys and DLF slipped 1.8% each to Rs 1,826 and Rs 610, respectively.

Maruti, Wipro, Satyam and Tata Steel were the other major losers today.

Bharti Airtel surged 2.3% to Rs 837, while HDFC gained 2% to Rs 2,678.

Hindustan Unilever and HDFC Bank added 0.3% each to Rs 235 and Rs 1,383, respectively.

Reliance Capital led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 283.43 crore followed by Cairn India (Rs 175.73 crore), Reliance (Rs 151.06 crore), Reliance Power (Rs 138.29 crore) and Ispat (Rs 126.68 crore).

Ispat topped the volume chart with trades of around 3.57 crore shares followed by IFCI (1.68 crore), Aishwarya Telecom (1.12 crore), Idea Cellular (92 lakh) and Reliance Natural Resources (81 lakh).