Sensex enters 13000 club, but market breadth weak

The Sensex breached the milestone level of 13000 for the first time and ended at a new closing high at 13024 amid strong buying in heavyweight, banking, oil and tech stocks.

The Sensex achieved the feat of surpassing the 13000 mark in the first half of the trading session and traded above the psychological level for the better part of the day.
After missing the 13000 level in the last few sessions amid profit taking, the Sensex showed strong optimism and rebounded from the intra-day low of 12845 touched in early trades. Shrugging off the weak trend in Asian and US indices, the Sensex picked up momentum by mid-morning and touched a new intra-day high of 13039 following substantial buying in heavyweight, banking and oil stocks. The Sensex finally ended the day at a new closing high of 13024, up 117 points, while the Nifty advanced 30 points at 3769. The other indices that are trading above the 13000 mark are the Nikkei and the Hang Seng.

Among the gainers, ICICI Bank advanced 3.63% at Rs785, Bharti Airtel rose 2.78% at Rs542, Infosys added 1.27% at Rs2,124, Dr Reddy's jumped 2.88% at Rs751, Reliance Communications added 2.30% at Rs394, ONGC gained 1.94% at Rs805 and HLL was up 1% at Rs229. However, Tata Motors dropped 3.86% at Rs852, Wipro lost 1.24% at Rs555 and BHEL declined 1.41% at Rs2,440.

On the sectoral front, the BSE Bankex was the star performer and rose 1.86% at 6518 while the BSE Oil & Gas index added 1.15% at 6050. Although most of the sectoral indices ended with decent gains, the BSE CD index shed 1.62% at 3204 while the BSE Metal index and the BSE Auto index inched marginally lower. However, the market breadth was negative. Of the 2,597 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,406 stocks declined, 1,133 stocks advanced and 58 stocks ended unchanged.

Among the banking stocks, Allahabad Bank surged 4.16% at Rs93, Kotak Bank gained 1.86% at Rs343 and UTI Bank added 1.83% at Rs426. Oil PSU stocks also firmed up on sustained buying interest. Chennai Petroleum soared 5.60% at Rs201, HPCL advanced 4.31% at Rs321, BPCL added 2.44% at Rs401 and Gujarat Gas gained 1.17% at Rs1,214.

Over 1.04 crore Nandan Exim shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Development Credit Bank (69.89 lakh shares), Silverline Technologies (63.10 lakh shares), IFCI (59.40 lakh shares) and SAIL (38.27 lakh shares).

Value-wise Tech Mahindra registered a turnover of Rs210 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Communications (Rs129 crore), Hindustan Zinc (Rs109 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs92 crore) and Alstom Projects (Rs80 crore).