Market ends buoyant

The market seemed to be following the record-setting run of Asian indices in the morning trades but came off its high as investors booked profits towards the close. The Sensex resumed on a positive note, taking cues from the firm Asian markets. The sustained buying in capital goods and banking stocks saw the Sensex touch the early high of 14493. The market remained buoyant thereafter but profit booking in index pivotal stocks dragged the Sensex to negative territory by the afternoon and it touched the day's low of 14407. However, the Sensex recovered on late buying in heavyweights, capital and consumer durables stocks, and touched the intra-day high of 14526. The Sensex finally ended the session with the gains of 87 points at 14499 and the Nifty finished the session at 4267, up19 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,653 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,437 stocks advanced, 1,134 stocks declined and 82 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE CG notched up gains of 2.06% at 11,736 followed by the BSE CD index (up 1.19% at 4048), the BSE Metal index (up 0.89% at 10,820) and the BSE PSU index (up 0.79% at 6729). However, the BSE IT index closed in the red.

The heavyweights witnessed strong buying interest. Reliance Energy soared 4.16% at Rs560, L&T rose 3.88% at Rs2,107, BHEL was up 3.64% at Rs1,481, Hindalco shot up by 2.74% at Rs167, Reliance Communication jumped 2.22% at Rs517, HDFC added 2.14% at Rs1,849, SBI gained 1.43% at Rs1,446, Ranbaxy moved up by 1.18% at Rs356 and Gujarat Ambuja Cement was up 1.02% at Rs119.

Capital goods stocks notched up significant gains during the day. HBL Power Systems jumped 12.46% at Rs297, South Asia Marine Engineering scaled up 9.98% at Rs221, Honeywel Auto rose 7.53% at Rs1,842, Gayatri Projects jumped 6.21% at Rs298, Disa India added 5% at Rs1,503, Asian Electric gained 5% at Rs805 and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure was up 5% at Rs483.

Over 89.56 lakh IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by GV Films (87.54 crore shares), IKF Technologies (75.81 lakh shares), IDBI (69.54 lakh shares) and Time Technologies (56.13 lakh shares).

Value-wise Time Technologies registered a turnover of Rs329 crore on the BSE followed by Divi's Lab (Rs222 crore), L&T (Rs145 crore), SBI (Rs116 crore) and Educomp (Rs108 crore).