Sensex posts modest gains

The market opened marginally up at 14122, tracking mixed global cues. It was quite sluggish opening with low volumes and thin market breadth. As the trading progressed the Sensex lost its momentum and gave up its early gains on across-the-board selling. The sustained selling in heavyweights, auto and consumer durable stocks dragged the Sensex to the day's low of 13947 by afternoon. The Sensex witnessed some movement in the second half of the trading session. The buying at lower levels in select Sensex stocks helped the index to recover some losses and enter into positive territory. Cement stocks, ACC and Gujarat Ambuja Cement witnessed buying action as the data from the Cement Manufacturers' Association showed an increase of sales by 10.6% to 1,421 million tonne in May. The market rallied sharply towards the close as gains in metal, oil & gas and banking stocks propelled the index to an intra-day high of 14153. The Sensex finally wrapped up the session with gains of 48 points at 14131 and the Nifty closed the session by adding nine points at 4155.

Surprisingly the market breadth was weak, with the losers outnumbering the gainers in the ratio of 2.03:1. Of the 2,581 stocks traded on the BSE 1,678 stocks declined, 823 stocks advanced and 80 stocks ended unchanged. Except the BSE Oil & Gas index, the BSE Metal index and the BSE Bankex most of the sectoral indices ended in negative territory. The BSE Auto index dropped 1.23% followed by the BSE CD index (down 0.96%), the BSE Teck index (down 0.80%) and the BSE IT index (down 0.79%).

Among the Sensex stocks, cement stocks logged significant gains. ACC led the surge and vaulted by 5.56% at Rs807, while Grasim soared 2.06% at Rs2395 and Gujarat Ambuja Cement advanced by 0.78% at Rs110. Among the other major gainers Tata Steel scaled up by 4.03% at Rs603, ICICI Bank shot up by 1.90% at Rs919, Reliance Industries vaulted by 1.88% at Rs1,670 and HDFC jumped 1.16% at Rs1,781. Hero Honda, L&T and HLL gained marginally.

Oil stocks were in the limelight. Jindal Drilling & Industries scaled up by 2.85% at Rs666, Castrol surged 2.47% at Rs272, BPCL added 2.40% at Rs346 and HPCL edged higher by 1.17% at Rs277.

Over 1.25 crore GV Films share changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources (93.31 lakh shares), S Kumars (66.64 lakh shares), IFCI (62.18 lakh shares) and IKF Technologies (55.86 lakh shares).

Value-wise Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs176 crore on the BSE followed by Nitin Fire Protections (Rs130 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs99 crore), SBI (Rs94 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs82 crore)