Market ends firm as banking stocks rally

The market reported a solid performance on the back of strong all-round buying even though the other major Asian indices exhibited a subdued trend in the morning trades. The market opened with a huge gap of 85 points at 14590 and rallied quickly to cross the 14600 mark on all-round buying in heavyweight, banking and capital goods stocks. The Sensex touched the day's high at 14663 on the reports that inflation for the week ended June 16 is lower than expected at 4.03% against 4.28% a week ago. The market remained buoyant thereafter and closed the session at 14651, up 146 points. The broad-based Nifty index ended the session at 4318, up 36 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,681 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,484 stocks advanced, 1,107 stocks declined and 90 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Bankex jumped 2.87% at 8009 followed by the BSE CG index (up 1.89% at 12299), the BSE PSU index (up 1.11% at 6802) and the BSE HC index (up 1.06% at 3806).

Most of the heavyweights ended at higher levels. Among the blue chips, Reliance Energy shot up by 5.78% at Rs614, HDFC Bank soared 4.75% at Rs1,144, ACC surged 3.88% at Rs934, SBI advanced by 3.74% at Rs1,525, HDFC added 3.66% at Rs2,030, BHEL moved up 3.32% at Rs1,538, Cipla scaled up 2.66% at Rs208 and Ranbaxy was up 2.01% at Rs355. Among the laggards, Hindalco dropped 5.21% at Rs160 while, Maruti Udyog, Bharti Airtel, ONGC, Gujarat Ambuja Cement, ITC, HLL and Satyam Computer closed marginally lower.

Banking stocks were in the limelight and closed with strong gains. Oriental Bank jumped 4.83% at Rs226, Punjab National Bank soared 4.77% at Rs540, Kotak Bank surged 4.75% at Rs673, Andhra Bank added 4.74% at Rs86, UTI Bank gained 4.26% at Rs605 and Bank of Baroda advanced by 4.08% at Rs270.

Over 2.62 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.27 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (97.27 crore shares), Megmani Organics (84.27 lakh shares) and Nagarjuna Fertilizers (78.95 lakh shares).

SBI clocked a turnover of Rs154 crore on the BSE followed by GMR Infrastructure (Rs122 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs120 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs99 crore) and Infosys (Rs91 crore).