Rally steers Sensex past 14400

After registering smart gains in yesterday's session, the market rallied sharply and gained 156 points during the intra-day trades. The firm Asian markets made the undertone bullish, with the Sensex crossing the 14400 mark in early trades and maintaining the upward bias thereafter. While the mood remained upbeat on strong buying in consumer durables, capital goods, auto and banking stocks, the rally gathered more steam in the afternoon and the Sensex touched the day's high of 14449. The Sensex finally ended the session with gains of 116 points at 14412 and the Nifty rose 35 points to close at 4249.

The breadth of the market was extremely positive, with gainers outnumbering losers in the ratio of 1.31:1. Of the 2,636 stocks traded on the BSE 1,446 stocks advanced, 1,103 stocks declined and 87 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE CD Index flared up by 1.48%, the BSE Bankex Index rose 1.42%, the BSE Auto Index moved up by 1.37% and the BSE CG Index was up 1.25%, while the other indices ended with moderate gains.

Barring a few, most of the Sensex stocks ended at higher levels. Cement major Gujarat Ambuja Cement flared up 4.60% at Rs118, SBI bounced back sharply and shot up by 3.85% at Rs1,425, Tata Motors zoomed 3.53% at Rs687, Grasim moved up by 3.11% at Rs2,513, Maruti Udyog scaled up 2.84% at Rs773, Bajaj Auto surged by 2.04% at Rs2,161, HDFC jumped by 1.94% at Rs1,810 and BHEL gained 1.73% at Rs1,430.

Consumer durable stocks were in demand and attracted strong buying support. Titan Industries spurted by 5.38% at Rs1,200, Gitanjali Gems shot up by 4.17% at Rs207, Bajaj Electricals flared up 3.47% at Rs550 and Hitachi Home & Life Science jumped by 2.89% at Rs103. Banking stocks, too, logged significant gains. Canara Bank soared 9.91% at Rs275, BOI added 4.31% at Rs213, Federal Bank jumped by 3.17% at Rs294 and Kotak Bank climbed 2.38% at Rs603.

Over 76.15 lakh Voltas shares changed hands on the BSE followed by GV Films (75.64 lakh shares), Reliance Natural Resources (73.14 lakh shares), IKF Technologies (64.41 lakh shares) and IFCI (57.30 lakh shares).

Value-wise Divi's Lab clocked a turnover of Rs164 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs154 crore), Educomp (Rs136 crore), India Infoline (Rs120 crore) and SBI (Rs107 crore).