Market hits new all-time high

The market attracted considerable buying interest for the second straight session, with the Sensex surging past the 14400 mark. The positive cues from global markets helped the Sensex to resume with a gap of 26 points at 14293 and gain substantial strength to beat its previous all-time high. A strong bout of buying in heavyweights, technology, consumer goods and capital goods stocks in the afternoon trades lifted the Sensex to its intra-day high at 14463. After shading some gains towards the close the Sensex ended the session by adding 137 points at 14404, while the Nifty ended the session gaining 47 points at 4184.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,719 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,428 stocks advanced, 1,232 stocks declined and 59 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE CG index advanced by 2.46% at 9824 followed by the BSE Teck index (up 2.04% at 3887) and the BSE CD (up 1.90% at 3969). However, the BSE PSU index, the BSE Bankex index and the BSE Oil & Gas index closed in negative territory.

Select blue chips gained substantially. Bharti Airtel rose 5.39% at Rs771, L&T advanced 4.79% at Rs1,677, HDFC climbed 4.26% at Rs1,744, Reliance Communication surged 3.54% at Rs491, Satyam Computer scaled up 3.54% at Rs491, Wipro added 3.38% at Rs643, Gujarat Ambuja jumped 2.48% at Rs143, Reliance Energy moved up by 1.83% at Rs534, Grasim gained 1.33% at Rs2812 and Tata Steel was up 1.14% at Rs463. Among the laggards, NTPC tumbled by 2.30% at Rs142, SBI slipped 1.81% at Rs1,181 and Hero Honda dropped 1.10% at Rs716 while ONGC, ICICI Bank, Infosys and Reliance Industries ended with marginal losses.

Consumer goods stocks were in the limelight. Greaves Cotton soared 8.70% at Rs370, Gammon India jumped 7.67% at Rs416, Jyoti Structures scaled up 4.20% at Rs177, Crompton Greaves advanced 3.99% at Rs207, Areva gained 3.92% at Rs1,266 and Praj Industries added 3.47% at Rs341. Carborundum Universal, Triveni Engineering and SKF India ended with marginal gains.

Over 35.65 lakh Tata Steel shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Communications (31.66 lakh shares), Cummins India (23.97 lakh shares), Welspun Gujarat (23.74 lakh shares) and SAIL (23.48 lakh shares).

Value-wise Tata Steel registered a turnover of Rs166 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Communications (Rs154 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs108 crore), SBI (Rs73 crore) and HDFC (Rs67 crore).