Market recoups lost ground in late buying

The Sensex witnessed a steep fall of about 200 points in early trades and plunged to the day's low of 13416. The market trimmed its losses as the trading progressed and forayed for some time into positive territory in late morning trades before taking a dip on renewed selling pressure. However, the index shrugged off the bearish trend towards the close and surged to an intra-day high of 13744 on healthy buying in oil & gas, pharma, banking and auto stocks. The Sensex finally closed with gains of 117 points at 13731, while the Nifty gained 40 points to close at 3929.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,617 stocks traded on the BSE 1,320 stocks advanced, 1,223 stocks declined and 74 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectorial indices the BSE Oil & Gas index surged 2.97% at 6151, the BSE Auto index jumped 1.03% at 5137, the BSE Health Care index added 1.01% at 3739 and the BSE Bankex was up 0.89% at 7057. However, the BSE CD index shed over 1%.

Several index heavyweights logged significant gains on fresh buying support. Among the major gainers ONGC soared 4.69% at Rs855, Ranbaxy surged 4.28% at Rs391, Tata Motors jumped 3.61% at Rs889, Wipro added 3.12% at Rs582, RIL gained 2.84% at Rs1,289, Hero Honda advanced 2.70% at Rs750 and TCS was up 2.22% at Rs1,182. Tata Steel at Rs467, ICICI Bank at Rs885, and Maruti at Rs920 were up 1% each. L&T, Grasim, HDFC Bank, Satyam, HDFC, SBI, Reliance Communication, Bharti Airtel and Dr Reddy's ended the day in positive territory. However, select counters came under selling pressure and ended in the red. BHEL tanked 4.21% at Rs2,391, NTPC declined 1.68% at Rs141, REL dropped 1.25% at Rs533, and Hindalco was down 1% at Rs176. Bajaj Auto, ACC, Infosys, Gujarat Ambuja Cements, ITC and Cipla ended with marginal losses.

Among the non-Sensex stocks oil & gas counters rallied sharply. GAIL soared 4.21% at Rs257 and Aban Offshore jumped 2.61% at Rs1,107. Essar Oil, IOC and BPCL were up around 1% each.

Over 54.50 lakh Tele Data shares changed hands on the BSE followed by LT Overseas (54.13 lakh shares), Zee Telefilms (34.47 lakh shares), Sterling Biotech (26.69 lakh shares) and Lanco Infra (26.55 lakh shares).

Value-wise i-flex registered a turnover of Rs128.66 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Communication (Rs119.75 crore), SBI (Rs105.88 crore), RIL (Rs102.81 crore) and Tech Mahindra (Rs92.11 crore).