Sensex ends marginally above 15k on firm overseas markets

The market opened higher taking cues from Asian indices, which moved up tracking US Federal Reserve's action on Friday to inject $39 billion into the banking system to curb spreading liquidity crunch. The market was back on track after slipping for last two sessions. The bounce from the recent sell-off was mainly in line with the recovery in the Asian and European markets which were up over 1%. The market remained firm for the entire trading session with considerable volatile moves. The Sensex began the day by adding 98 points at 14,966 and moved up to touch the intra-day high of 15,044 on substantial buying support in auto, FMCG and consumer durable stocks. The Sensex finally closed the session at 15,017 up 149 points, while the broad based Nifty wrapped up the session at 4,374 up 40 points.

The breadth of the market was positive, with the gainers outpacing the losers in the ratio of 2.36:1. Of the 2,759 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,904 stocks advanced, 804 stocks declined and 51 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Auto index moved up by 1.89% followed by the BSE FMCG index (up 1.53%), the BSE CD index (up 1.41%), the BSE Metal index (up 1.34%) and the BSE HC index (up 1.11%). However, The BSE IT index closed in negative territory and shed 0.19%.

Among the heavyweights HLL gained 4.04% at Rs204, Tata Motors soared 3.46% at Rs692, Cipla surged 3.33% at Rs191, M&M moved up by 3.80% at Rs690, Ambuja Cement scaled up 2.65% at Rs130, Bajaj Auto was up 2.64% at Rs2,380, Maruti Udyog advanced by 2.47% at Rs830 and HDFC gained 1.86% at Rs1,984. However, the IT majors TCS, Infosys and Satyam ended the day in negative territory.

Over 2.08 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Nagarjuna Fertilizers (1.18 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.18 crore shares), Mangalore Chemicals (1.03 crore shares) and Silverline Technologies (one crore shares).

Value-wise, Everonn Systems registered a turnover of Rs399 crore on the BSE followed by Orbit (Rs208 crore), IFCI (Rs139 crore), IDBI (Rs113 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs88 crore).