Sensex soars 87 points

The market settled in positive territory in the afternoon and witnessed a rally. However, there was considerable volatility in early trades. The Sensex began the trading session with a positive gap of 13 points and moved past 13480 in early trades before a bout of selling dragged it to the day's low of 13362. The sentiment turned extremely bullish in the afternoon driven by across-the-board buying support, which lifted the index to an intra-day high of 13494. The Sensex closed with gains of 87 points at 13472 while the Nifty was up 38 points at 3871.

The breadth of the market was firm. Of the 2,631 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,497 stocks advanced, 1,050 stocks declined and 84 stocks ended unchanged. The BSE Metal index led the sectoral indices table with gains of 1.48%. The BSE CG index, the BSE Oil & Gas index and the BSE CD index gained around 1% each. The other sectoral indices also ended in the green except the BSE FMCG index.

Leading the upsurge, Gujarat Ambuja Cements soared 3.09% at Rs137, Hero Honda surged 2.99% at Rs750, Wipro gained 2.67% at Rs573, Larsen & Toubro added 2.37% at Rs1,432, Tata Steel advanced 1.99% at Rs478, ACC gained 1.87% at Rs1,049 and Grasim Industries was up 1.74% at Rs2,710. ONGC, Reliance Communication, TCS, Bajaj Auto and BHEL gained over 1% each. However, Satyam Computers, ITC, Tata Motors, HDFC Bank, HLL and Maruti Udyog ended weak.

Among the other gainers Visual Soft surged 12.03% at Rs78, Sterling Biotech soared 8.04% at Rs198, Sobha Developers gained 8% at Rs1,008 and Mastek added 7.84% at Rs353. iGate Global, Rolta India, Sun TV, Finolex Industries, JSW Steel and Zee Telefilms gained 4-6% each.

The metal stocks were in action on account of the price hike announced by a few companies. Sesa Goa rallied 12.53% at Rs1,392. Jindal Stainless, Maharashtra Seamless, Jindal Saw and SAIL added 1-5 % each.

Sobha Developers was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with trades of over 24.21 lakh shares followed by Sterling Biotech (23.47 lakh shares), Reliance Communication (17.71 lakh shares) and SAIL (13.93 lakh shares).