Buoyancy lifts Sensex past 15,300

The market extended its longest winning streak for the sixth consecutive session on firm Asian indices, and the strong buying support from investors kept the sentiment bullish for the better part of the day. After registering over 950 points growth from last five sessions, the Sensex opened flat but swiftly moved past 15,300 mark in early trades to touch the intra-day high of 15,351. The market largely remained unchanged above 15,300 despite good GDP numbers and slide in inflation. However, buoyancy in heavyweight, metal, oil and auto stocks kept the Sensex upbeat. The Sensex finally ended the session with a gain of 197 points at 15,318, while the Nifty added 52 points to close at 4,464.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,773 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,640 stocks advanced, 1,060 stocks declined and 73 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Metal index jumped 2.38% at 11,566 followed by the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 2.30% at 8,160), the BSE Auto index (up 2.12% at 4,878), the BSE PSU index (up 2.11% at 7,095) and the BSE HC index (up 2.05% at 3,573).

Most of the heavyweights ended at higher levels. Among the blue chips, M&M shot up by 5.02% at Rs709, Tata Steel soared 4.92% at Rs690, NTPC surged 4.27% at Rs173, Maruti Udyog advanced by 4.13% at Rs868, Ranbaxy added 3.53% at Rs391, HLL moved up 3.09% at Rs209, Tata Motors scaled up 2.93% at Rs702 and Reliance Industries was up 2.73% at Rs1,960. Among the laggards, HDFC Bank at Rs1,171, Bajaj Auto at Rs2,345, HDFC at Rs1,976, Hindalco at Rs158, Grasim at Rs2,936 and Infosys at Rs1,855 closed marginally lower.

Metal stocks were in the limelight and closed with strong gains. Bhushan Steel jumped 15.12% at Rs760, Welspun Gujarat soared 5.50% at Rs247, Jindal Stainless surged 4.41% at Rs165, JSW Steel added 3.94% at Rs642, Hindustan Zinc gained 3% at Rs721 and Jindal Steel advanced by 2.99% at Rs3,941.

Over 3.03 crore Nagarjuna Fertilisers shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IKF Technologies (2.23 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.65 crore shares), IFCI (1.52 crore shares) and Tata Teleservices (1.32 crore shares).

Reliance Industries clocked a turnover of Rs232 crore on the BSE followed by Tata Steel (Rs128 crore), Nagarjuna Fertilisers (Rs117 crore), SBI (Rs112 crore) and Purvankara Projects (Rs111 crore).