Sensex gains 22 points

Sensex Open:13667 High:13791 Low:13667

In a listless trading session, the market displayed a range-bound trend amid bouts of buying and selling. After opening 11 points below its last close at 13670, the Sensex moved up to touch an intra-day high of 13768. The index remained steady around the 13700 mark for a major portion of the session. The Sensex pared some of its gains on selling towards the close and ended the session at 13703, up 22 points for the day. The Nifty advanced five points to close at 3951.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,612 stocks traded, 1,355 stocks advanced, 1,173 stocks declined and 84 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Metal index, the BSE PSU index and the BSE CD index gained slightly over 1% each while the BSE CG index and the BSE OIL & Gas index finished lower.

Among the front-line stocks NTPC led the upmove and soared 5.74% at Rs150. Tata Steel surged 2.46% at Rs483, Dr Reddy's Laboratories advanced 2.40% at Rs755, Cipla jumped 1.75% at Rs264, Hindalco added 1.63% at Rs178, Wipro gained 1.44% at Rs590, ONGC rose 1.35% at Rs857 and HLL advanced 1.02% at Rs243. However, Hero Honda Motors dropped 1.43% at Rs736, L&T fell 1.12% at Rs1,387 and Bharti Airtel was down 1.09% at Rs616.

The stocks which touched new all-time highs on the BSE were Binani Industries at Rs381, BHEL at Rs2,557, Borosil at Rs286, Corcomp Infosystem at Rs107, Delco Remy at Rs202, Shivaji Securities at Rs33 and Sinnar Bidi at Rs286.

Over 61.49 lakh HDFC shares changed hands on the BSE followed by TVS Motors (41.37 lakh shares), SAIL (30.40 lakh shares) and NTPC (26.23 lakh shares).