Mumbai May 29: The Sensex opened with positive gap of 141 points at 16,666 on a positive cues from the global markets, the index pared gains in the late noon trades and slipped into a negative zone.

Unabated selling in auto, banking and oil & gas stocks forced the index touch a low of 16,196 - down 329 points from its previous close.

The index finally ended with a loss of 209 points at 16,316.

The market breadth was negative - out of 2,761 stocks traded, 1,115 advanced, 1,537 declined and 109 were unchanged today.

The NSE Nifty shed 83 points to end at 4,835.

Tata Motors tumbled 8.2% to Rs 582, while Ambuja Cements plunged over 6% to Rs 98.

Mahindra & Mahindra declined 5.5% to Rs 606. SBI slipped 3.6% to Rs 1,464. Hindalco dropped 3.5% at Rs 190.

HDFC and NTPC was down over 3% each to Rs 2,433 and Rs 171, respectively.

ICICI Bank shed 2.8% to Rs 797. DLF and ONGC lost 2.4% each to Rs 589 and Rs 854, respectively.

Reliance was trading at Rs 2,466 - down 2.2%.

Reliance Infrastructure, ITC, HDFC Bank and slipped around 2% each to Rs 1,246, Rs 217, Rs 1,324 and Rs 655, respectively.

Maruti and Jaiprakash Associates were down 1.7% each at Rs 764 and Rs 225, respectively.

TCS, Bharti Airtel and Infosys were the prominent losers - down over 1% each.

Larsen & Toubro zoomed 6.6% to Rs 2,889. Reliance Communications surged 3.9% to Rs 573. Cipla gained 3% to Rs 214.

Satyam moved up 2.3% to Rs 526. Ranbaxy advanced 1.8% at Rs 505.

Wipro added 1.2% to Rs 512.

Larsen & Toubro led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 449.63 crore followed by IFCI (Rs 341.60 crore), Piramal Life Sciences (Rs 281.86 crore), Chambal Fertilisers (223.52 crore) and Bajaj Finserv (Rs 199.56 crore).

IFCI topped the volume chart with trades of around 5.42 crore shares followed by Chambal Fertilisers (2.49 crore), Nagarjuna Fertilisers (1.92 crore), Ispat Industries (1.32 crore) and Aishwarya Telecom (1.17 crore).