Market Close: New high.. headed up !

After recording highest gains during last week market continued to extend its gains. Reliance group companies, Oil, Banks and Metal stocks contined to support the index. But market gave some of its earlier gains on profit booking however eventually managed to keep its head up to make yet another all time high. Open Interest made a record and hit 1 lakh crore mark. This will be the biggest series ever rolled over on F&O expiry day. Energy & Power stocks continued to hog the limelight. Techies stocks still under selling pressure due to strong rupee at 39.77 against Dollar. Europe was a little cautious and is trading almost flat.

Sensex ended up by 272 points at 16836. It was helped up by gains in REL. ENERGY (1092+8.22 percent), MARUTI SUZUKI (980,+5.5 percent), NTPC (196,+5 percent), L&T (2900+4.2 percent) and RELIANCE (2352.80,+3.45 percent). Restricting the gains were INFOSYS (1760, 3.37 percent), Satyam (407.45, 2.72 percent).

HDFC reduced new home loans by 50 bps. The home loan rate cut is for disbursements up to October. It will decide on continuation of rate cut post announcement of the credit policy. The decision has been taken in view of the lower cost of funds, the benefit of which is being passed on to the customers. HDFC is not alone in this venture. Bank of Baroda too has cut its home loan rate for Rs 20 lakh loan from 10.75 % to 10.25 per cent for tenure of 20 years. Similarly a host of large PSU banks including the State Bank of India, Union Bank and Punjab National Bank are all looking at cutting home loan rates by nearly half a percentage point. However ICICI Bank is currently not looking at slashing rates. According to sources cost of funds is still high and hence there is as of now no scope to offer lower rates even temporarily for the festive season. The stock performed well on the back of news and ended marginally higher.

Low budget carrier Air Deccan lost market share in July-August monsoon season this year to 16.1% down by 2 % point?s month on month basis. SpiceJet?s share stood at 7.7% during the month as against 7.7% in June. The hike in fairs is probably the reason.. Jet the market leader increased its share to 22.7% as compared to 22% in the previous month. Kingfisher increased its market share to 13% in July as compared to 12.9% in June. The market share of Indian Airlines went up to 20.5% in July as compared to 19.8% in June. Domestic airlines carried 24.85 million passengers during January-July period registering a growth of 37.81%. Spice is where our eyes on.. Spicejet has revised its fleet size expansion plans for FY08. It will add 6 new aircraft against 8 new planned earlier. It expects 2 aircrafts to be back from Transaaria which were leased out in July 2007. Near term high crude prices is something which will weigh. But an industry growing by 35%+ is in now way to be ignored. Spicejet was more benefited which ended up by 5% while Air Deccan was marginally impacted by the news.

Technically Speaking: Markets traded well on the back of strong sentiment. Sensex touched intraday high of 16869 and low of 16599. Over all market turnover was fantastic for the day at Rs 4715 Cr. Market breadth was in favor of Advances. The Decliners stood at 760 while Advances was 1971. Sensex is in a runaway mood. The trend is up and no negative signs as of now, trade up.