Market gains, but ends off its high

Strong Asian markets coupled with expectations of substantial profits by Reliance Industries and Ranbaxy saw the Sensex open with a positive gap of 35 points at 14166. The action in several counters lifted the Sensex to an all-time high of 14326. However, a strong bout of profit taking towards the close saw the index shed 108 points from the day's high. The Sensex ended the session with decent gains of 86 points at 14218, while the Nifty added 33 points to close at 4109.

The breadth of the market was marginally positive. Of the 2,715 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,362 stocks advanced, 1,300 stocks declined and 53 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Oil & Gas index advanced 1.62% at 6664 followed by the BSE PSU index (up 1.28% at 6294) and the BSE FMCG index (up 1.13% at 1935). However, the BSE CD index, the BSE Metal index and the BSE Bankex closed in negative territory. The BSE Midcap index hit an all-time high of 6193.37 after a gap of eight months. The major drivers for the mid-cap index were the stocks from the information technology, banking, steel and cement sectors.

Select blue chips notched up significant gains. HDFC surged 3.14% at Rs1,596, ONGC soared 2.49% at Rs916, L&T climbed 2.12% at Rs1,586, ITC rose 1.57% at Rs172, HLL scaled up 1.43% at Rs224, Satyam added 1.27% at Rs515, Reliance Industries jumped 1.27% at Rs1,367, BHEL advanced 1.23% at Rs2,300, Maruti Udyog gained 1.16% at Rs918 and Wipro was up 1.48% at Rs167. Among the laggards HLL tumbled by 4.13% at Rs232 and Grasim dropped 1.10% at Rs641. Tata Steel, ICICI Bank, Reliance Communication, Reliance Energy and Tata Motors ended with marginal losses.

Value-wise Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs115 crore on the BSE followed by Ranbaxy (Rs71 crore), Siemens (Rs63 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs62 crore) and ONGC (Rs51 crore).