Sensex ends buoyant, gains 71 points

The market witnessed strong bullish sentiment in the afternoon, but fell short by 25 points from surpassing the new all-time high of 13076. After exhibiting a sluggish trend yesterday, the Sensex opened 31 points above its previous close at 12993, but slipped below yesterday's close on profit taking to touch the day's low of 12937. However, the market steadily gained momentum on renewed optimism and rallied sharply on sustained buying in oil and gas, capital goods, FMCG and heavyweight stocks to touch an intra-day high of 13051. The Sensex wrapped up the session with gains of 71 points at 13033, while the Nifty advanced 23 points to close at 3767.

Leading the upsurge, Reliance Industries advanced 3.10% at Rs1,264, Reliance Communication soared 2.56% at Rs389, Bharti Airtel jumped 2.08% at Rs541, SBI gained 1.88% at Rs1,116, Gujarat Ambuja added 1.83% at Rs119, BHEL surged 1.83% at Rs2,459, HLL added 1.43% at Rs237, Hero Honda advanced 1.16% at Rs765 and ACC was up 1.12% at Rs979. Grasim, Hindalco, NTPC, L&T, Dr Reddy's, Infosys, ITC and Tata Motors ended the day in the green. However, HDFC slumped 2.88% at Rs1,428, Cipla tumbled 1.95% at Rs257, ONGC shed 1.43% at Rs804, Satyam declined 1.28% at Rs435 and HDFC Bank dropped 1.01% at Rs994. REL, Maruti, Ranbaxy, Bajaj Auto, TCS, Wipro, ICICI Bank and Tata Steel also ended the day in negative territory.

The breadth of the market was mixed. Of the 2,590 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,262 stocks advanced, 1,254 stocks declined and 74 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral front, the BSE Oil & Gas index was the biggest gainer and was up 1.53% at 6139 followed by the BSE CG index (up 0.84% at 3187), the BSE FMCG index (up 0.78% at 2065) and the BSE TECk index (up 0.76% at 3296).

Over 1.20 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Development Credit Bank (92.57 lakh shares), Silverline Technologies (87.34 lakh shares), Nandan Exim (83.53 lakh shares) and IFCI (36.18 lakh shares).

Value-wise Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs292.48 crore on the BSE followed by McDowell (Rs133.14 crore), Tech Mahindra (Rs128.24 crore), Hindustan Zinc (Rs107.66 crore) and Alstom Projects (Rs79.57 crore).