Sensex ends buoyant

The market reported a solid performance on the back of strong all-round buying even as the major Asian indices exhibited a subdued trend in morning trades. Shrugging off the global cues, the market opened with a gap of 43 points at 15,547. The market was range-bound, but stayed above the 15,550 mark in the mid morning trades. As trading progressed, the index lost ground by the afternoon and touched the day's low at 15,469. The eruption of buying towards the close in heavyweights, banking and oil stocks lifted the Sensex to touch the intra-day high of 15,692 and close at 15,670, up 165 points. The Nifty ended the session at 4,546, up 52 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,837 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,813 stocks advanced, 968 stocks declined and 56 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Bankex index jumped 2.47% at 8,291 followed by the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 1.51% at 8,499), the BSE PSU index (up 1.48% at 7,386) and the BSE CG index (up 1.15% at 13,863).

Barring a few select counters, most of the heavyweights ended at higher levels. Among the blue chips ICICI Bank shot up by 3.39% at Rs925, SBI soared 2.85% at Rs1,693, Bharti Airtel surged 2.24% at Rs833 and Reliance Energy advanced by 2.08% at Rs927. ONGC added 1.80% at Rs851, M&M moved up 1.48% at Rs709, Reliance Industries scaled up 1.48% at Rs2,058 and Grasim was up 1.44% at Rs3,257. Among the laggards Cipla dropped 2.01% at Rs169 and Wipro shed 1.21% at Rs444 while ITC, Infosys, Dr Reddy's Lab, Satyam Computers, HDFC, Tata Motors and Ranbaxy closed marginally lower.

Banking stocks were in the limelight and closed with strong gains. Centurion Bank of Punjab vaulted 6.23% at Rs40, Bank of Baroda soared 4.48% at Rs296, Oriental Bank surged 3.51% at Rs229 and ICICI Bank advanced by 3.39% at Rs925. Andhra Bank, SBI, Allahabad Bank, Yes Bank, Kotak Bank and Federal Bank gained over 2% each.

Over 3.20 lakh Ispat industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Sun Iron & Steel (1.05 crore shares), IFCI (94.57 lakh shares), Manglore Chemical & Fertilisers (94.32 lakh shares) and Indowind Energy (89.61 lakh shares).

Reliance Capital clocked a turnover of Rs224 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Industries (Rs176 crore), Reliance Industrial Infrastructure (Rs129 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs128 crore) and Indowind Energy (Rs121 crore).