Close: Year starts of Green.

The New Year session today started off with cheerful momentum and buying interest was seen across all the sectors across board. It also included mid and small caps. Sustained buying across sectors like Auto, Cement, Construction, Engineering, Power and Fertilize helped the indices to close at the high point of the day. The Asian indices ended strong while Europe traded mixed.

Sensex closed up by 155 points at 13942.24 helped up by gains in Satyam (508.35,+5 percent), Bajaj Auto (2738.75,+5 percent), Maruti (969.25,+5 percent), Tata Motors (929.9,+3 percent) and Hero Honda (784.15,+3 percent). Restricting the gains were TISCO (478.4,-1 percent), Dr Reddys (805.95,-1 percent), HDFC (1620,0 percent), RCVL (470.75,0 percent) and HDFC Bk (1068.7,0 percent). topnew.gif (1104 bytes)

Auto shares reacted to their numbers.. while others in anticipation. Performance started off well !

Reliance Fresh, the vegetable and fruits store brand of Reliance Retail, will open as many as 75 outlets in Madhya Pradesh starting April this year. The stores, which represent the front-end of Reliance's farm-to-fork project, would be opened in cities like Indore, Bhopal, Gwalior and Jabalpur under the first phase. The retail initiative will help farmers as they would be able to sell their produce directly to Reliance thus saving on transportation expenses, adding that Reliance would also provide farmers valuable tips on new techniques. This will help the company venture into newer regions where it has no presence and diversify its revenues. Reliance closed up by 1%. But really all this talk sounds good on paper. We believe that the years of transportation of farm produce has not been able to sell at the prices being talked off in an environment being envisaged. Clearly the economies of scale in this kind of business are limited. We believe its not right to get carried away by this yet and would be better to wait for the results. The cost of power, manpower, real estate is shooting. Its certainly a daunting task to make money against a vegetable vendor who has none of these associated costs.

State-owned power major National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPC) signed an agreement with the Sri Lankan Government and Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) for setting up a 500 megawatt coal-based power project at Trincomalee with an investment of 500 million dollars. The project, expected to commence operations from 2011, would be developed through a joint venture company between NTPC and CEB, both having 50 per cent stake in it. The project would be funded with a debt equity ratio of 70:30. Being a coal-based power plant, the cost of generation is expected to be substantially lower by about 50 per cent of the power generated from diesel and other liquid fuel. Power from the plant will be sold in Sri Lanka. This will help the company project into newer regions where it has no presence and expand its revenues. The Power stocks closed a mixed bag while NTPC closed up by 1%.

It was a day for reporting of the auto companies. Maruti had a fantastic sale and so did Bajaj Auto. The stocks reacted to that positively. Hero Honda flared up too and thats surprising. Telco is expected to post fantastic CV sales helped by ACE but the stock has been already bouyant.

Technically Speaking: It was a bull session for the whole day before closing. Sensex touched intraday high of 13990 and low of 13780. Overall breadth went in favor of Advancers where advancers stood at 740 and Decliners at 240. The Resistance level was at 13990 -14030 while Support at 13780 -13740 levels. Market turnover stood good at Rs 3380 cr.