Market gains on last minute buying

While majority of the Asian markets closed in the red today, the domestic indices shrugged off the intra-day volatile moves and registered decent gains at close. The Sensex moved marginally up, above its previous close to open at 14,858. But, slipped on sustained selling in frontline stocks and touched the day's low of 14,752 in the early trades. However, the market bucked the trend and recovered on buying in heavyweights, metal and information technology stocks. The market remained subdued thereafter and zigzagged between positive and negative territory in the afternoon. In the last hour of the trading session the Sensex saw hectic activity and moved northwards on selective buying in frontline stocks and finally closed the session in the green by gaining 77 points at 14,919. The Nifty, too, witnessed the choppy trades and wrapped up the session with the gains of 19 points at 4,321.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,700 stocks traded on the BSE 1,566 stocks advanced, 1,061 stocks advanced and 73 stocks remained unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE IT index gained 1.91% at 4,559 while the BSE Oil & Gas index, the BSE Metal index, the BSE Teck index also ended with the gains. The BSE Bankex index and the BSE Auto index closed in the red.

Select heavyweights edged higher on decent buying support. Hindalco rose 3.30% at Rs153, HDFC Bank jumped 2.73% at Rs1,152, Reliance Industries advanced 2.58% at Rs1,880, Satyam computer added 2.48% at Rs450, Infosys gained 1.83% at Rs1882 and ITC gained 1.33% at Rs167. However, select front-line stocks came under selling pressure. ICICI Bank was the major loser and dropped 2.43% at Rs862. Other draggers Tata Motors declined 1.96% at Rs663, Ranbaxy dropped 1.09% at Rs367 and ONGC shed 1.09% at Rs809.

Over 3.44 crore Tata Teleservices shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Mascon Global (84.38 lakh shares), IFCI (77.74 lakh shares), Hindustan Motors (59.60 lakh shares) and Nagarjuna Fertilisers (55.45 lakh shares).