Sensex hits 15000 mark

The market sent jitters amongst the investors in early trades, as the Sensex opened at 14843, lost ground on sustained selling to slip below the 14830 mark and touched the day's low of 14826. However, renewed buying ensured the Sensex remained in positive territory thereafter. The strong buying in IT and CG stocks lifted the Sensex above the 15000 mark to an intra-day high of 15007. The Sensex finally ended the session with gains of 0.69% and was up 102 points at 14964, while the Nifty advanced 0.71% and was up 31 points at 4385.

The breadth of the market was overwhelmingly positive. Of the 2,662 stocks traded on the BSE 1,476 stocks advanced, 1,104 stocks declined and 82 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices closed higher except Metal, HC, Bankex and CD stocks. The BSE IT index rose 3.31% at 4950 followed by the BSE Teck index (up 2.47% at 3814), the BSE CG index (up 1.25% at 12776), and the BSE IT index (up 0.44% at 4903).

Only nine blue chips failed to attract buying support while 21 Sensex stocks finished with gains. On the back of strong buying Satyam soared 5.40% at Rs489. TCS jumped by 4.44% at Rs1159, Wipro surged 3.02% at Rs519, Infosys added 2.85% at Rs1971, HDFC Bank advanced 2.10% at Rs1153, ACC moved up by 1.85% at Rs1041, NTPC rose 1.70% at Rs155, L&T scaled up 1.67% at Rs2370 and Gujarat Ambuja was up 1.67% at Rs131. Other heavyweights also gained 0.50-1% each. However, ICICI Bank shed 2.37% at Rs982 while Cipla ended marginally lower at Rs212, down 1.87%.

Among the IT stocks Silverline Technologies surged 9.94% at Rs13.60, HOV Services spurted 9.76% at Rs225, Helios jumped 9.26% at Rs158, Asia CERC added 6.21% at Rs196 and Zenith Info gained 5.00% at Rs566. In the tech pack Tech Mahindra vaulted 4.82% at Rs1464, TCS soared 4.44% at Rs1159, Zee Enterprises zoomed 3.84% at Rs311, Balaji Tele advanced 3.74% at Rs231 and Wipro gained 3.02% at Rs519.

Over 55.21 lakh DLF shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RPL (39.02 lakh shares), Cairn India (33.06 lakh shares), ICICI Bank (32.52 lakh shares) and IDBI (25.83 lakh shares).

ICICI Bank registered a turnover of Rs319 crore on the BSE followed by DLF (Rs318 crore), Reliance Communication (Rs143 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs131 crore) and SBI (Rs98.58 crore)