Bulls strike back, pulls Sensex above 15,600

The market showed strong optimism today despite witnessing a fall in trades yesterday. The Sensex had a gap-down opening on the back of weak global cues and lacked any triggers. However, buoyancy in heavyweights triggered a major rally and the Sensex entered into the positive territory by the mid-morning trades. Maintaining its upward bias thereafter, extensive buying in auto, cement and banking stocks propelled the index to touch an intra-day high of 15,638, up 192 points for the day. The Sensex finally ended the session with gains of 1.10% and was up 170 points at 15,616. The Nifty moved up by 0.96% and was up 43 points to close at 4,519.

The market breadth was positive, with the gainers outpacing the losers in the ratio of 1.65:1 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Of the 2,774 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,683 stocks advanced, 1,015 stocks declined and 76 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices notched up significant gains. The BSE FMCG index was the biggest gainer and soared 1.54% followed by the BSE Auto index (up 1.24%), the BSE PSU index (up 1.22%), the BSE Bankex index (up 1.15%), the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 1.11%) and the BSE CD index (up 1.09%).

Among the 30 stocks in the Sensex basket, 28 ended at higher levels. Reliance Energy led the upsurge and flared by 4.50% at Rs860. Among the other major gainers Grasim surged 3.97% at Rs3,177, Ranbaxy moved up by 3.53% at Rs414, HDFC advanced 2.82% at Rs2,111, SBI vaulted 2.35% at Rs1,632, Ambuja Cement shot up by 2.29% at Rs141, ITC added 2.10% at Rs175 and Tata Motors rose 1.94% at Rs712. While, Hindalco slipped 1.27% at Rs155 and Bharti Airtel was marginally down at Rs847.

FMCG stocks saw strong buying action during the day. Glaxo surged 2.49% at Rs636, HUL soared 1.84% at Rs216, United Sprits jumped 1.82% at Rs1519 and Bata India added 1.26% at Rs173. Auto stocks also logged significant gains with Hero Honda, Ashaok Layland, M&M, TVS Motors, Hinustan Motors, Bajaj Auto and Maruti Udyog soaring over 1-2% each.

Over 1.76 crore Bella Steels shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IKF Technologies (1.31 crore shares), IFCI (1.26 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (1.14 crore shares) and Manali Petro (1.10 crore shares).

IVRCL Infrastructure was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs132 crore followed by Reliance Energy (Rs125 crore), SBI (Rs105 crore), India Bulls (Rs104 crore) and GMR Infrastructure (Rs102 crore).