Rally propels Sensex past 13400

The market was highly volatile on the first day of the week and remained buoyed by the fall in crude oil prices. The Sensex made a perfect start by commencing firm at 13295, 12 points above its previous close of 13283 and remained extremely upbeat in the second half of the trading session as strong gains in heavyweight, tech, banking and auto stocks lifted the index to a new intra-day high of 13410. The Sensex wrapped up the session with gains of 116 points at 13399, while the Nifty advanced 24 points to close at 3859. However, the other Asian indices like the Nikkei, the Hang Seng, the Jakarta Composite and the Straits Times closed with marginal losses.

The breadth of the market was positive, with the gainers outpacing the losers in the ratio of 1.36:1. Of the 2,626 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,474 stocks advanced, 1,080 stocks declined and 72 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral front the BSE TECk index led with a surge of 1.41% at 3380 followed by the BSE Bankex (up 0.82% at 6794), the BSE Auto index (up 0.82% at 5367) and the BSE CD index (up 0.79% at 3289).

Driving the rally, NTPC surged 5.67% at Rs138. HDFC advanced 4.02% at Rs1,555, Bharti Airtel gained 3.88% at Rs565, Reliance Communication surged 3.14% at Rs404, REL soared 2.65% at Rs535, Tata Motors jumped 1.90% at Rs834, Gujarat Ambuja Cements added 1.78% at Rs137, ICICI Bank gained 1.05% at Rs841, Wipro was up 1.03% at Rs542, Infosys added 1.02% at Rs2,161 and HDFC Bank was up 1% at Rs1,055. BHEL, Maruti, Dr Reddy's, TCS, ACC, Grasim, Satyam, SBI, Cipla and RIL also ended in positive territory. However, on the negative side, Hero Honda was a major loser and shed 1.43% at Rs715. Hindalco was down 1.11% at Rs182. Tata Steel shed 1.07% at Rs497 and ONGC closed weaker by 0.89% at Rs871. Ranbaxy, ITC, HLL, Bajaj Auto and L&T ended the day with marginal losses.

Over 1.09 crore GTL Infrastructure shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Shyam Telecom (71.34 lakh shares), Godrej Consumers (35.60 lakh shares), CCS Infotech (32.49 lakh shares) and Facor Alloys (32.23 lakh shares).

Shyam Telecom recorded a turnover of Rs114.33 crore on the BSE followed by Jaiprakash Associates (Rs109.86 crore), Hindustan Zinc (Rs92.00 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs74.97 crore) and RIL (Rs71.92 crore).