Market recovers some lost ground

After witnessing a huge crash yesterday that wiped out almost 1.4 lakh crore of investors’ wealth, the market began the trading session on a positive note. The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 49 points at 12504 and moved up on buying in select heavyweight and information technology stocks. After an initial upmove to 12584 the Sensex eased on profit taking in Cipla, SBI, Bajaj Auto and select front-line stocks. The Sensex touched the day's low at 12482, down 176 points from the day's high. Short covering and the emergence of buying at lower levels saw the Sensex recover in the afternoon. The major support came from stocks like BHEL, NTPC, Wipro, Hero Honda and some information technology stocks that propelled the Sensex to an intra-day high of 12658. The Sensex closed the session at 12625 with gains of 169 points. The Nifty ended the session at 3691, up 57 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,514 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,382 stocks advanced, 1,047 stocks declined and 85 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE PSU Index gained 2.16% at 5797 followed by the BSE IT Index (up 2.02% at 4767), the BSE Oil & Gas Index (up 1.86% at 6287) and the BSE CD Index (up 1.63% at 3505).

Most of the heavyweights ended at higher levels. Among the blue chips BHEL shot up by 4.66% at Rs2,255, NTPC soared 4.58% at Rs154, Hero Honda advanced 3.05% at Rs657, Satyam Computers added 2.78% at Rs459, Grasim gained 2.42% at Rs2,104, Infosys advanced 2.22% at Rs1,964 and Reliance Industries was up 2.11% at Rs1,341. Among the laggards Cipla, HDFC, Bajaj Auto, SBI and ICICI Bank closed with marginal losses.

Public sector units were in the limelight and closed with substantial gains. Oriental Bank of Commerce vaulted 5.81% at Rs178, Bank of India soared 5.58% at Rs163, GAIL surged 4.77% at Rs279 and Dena Bank advanced by 4.29% at Rs34. Dredging Corporation, SAIL, Bharat Electrical and Corporation Bank gained 2-4% each.

Over 1.50 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Power Finance Corporation (52.32 lakh shares), Rana Sugars (50.30 lakh shares), Sakthi Sugars (41.06 lakh shares) and Reliance Petroleum (29.86 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries clocked a turnover of Rs112 crore on the BSE followed by Renuka Sugar (Rs110 crore), India Bulls (Rs68 crore), BHEL (Rs67 crore) and Kotak Bank (Rs67 crore).