Bulls strike back; Sensex up 879 points

After a subdued trend in last few sessions, the market staged a solid comeback today. The market rallied sharply, making up for the lost ground, after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) clarified its position to foreign fund investors on participatory notes. The bulls were back in action after closing flat yesterday. The Sensex took cues from buoyant international markets and resumed 296 points above its previous close at 17,910 on the back of strong buying in heavyweights, capital goods, oil, and banking stocks. The buoyancy propelled the Sensex to the day's high of 18,542 by the afternoon. The Sensex finally closed with a gain of 879 points at 18,493. Nifty advanced 290 points to close at 5,474.

The market breadth was highly positive, with the gainers outpacing the losers in the ratio of 3.17:1 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Of the 2,798 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,089 stocks advanced, 658 stocks declined and 51 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices notched up significant gains. The BSE CG index was the biggest gainer and soared by 7.76% followed by the BSE PSU index (up 7.01%), the BSE Metal index (up 6.65%), the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 6.55%), the BSE Realty index (up 6.38%), the BSE Bankex index (up 5.91%) and the BSE FMCG index (up 4.08%).

Barring few, all the stocks in the Sensex basket ended at higher levels. BHEL led the upsurge and flared by 11.54% at Rs2,294. Among the other major gainers Reliance Energy surged 11.18% at Rs1,523, NTPC moved up by 8.84% at Rs217 and Bharti Airtel advanced 8.38% at Rs1,005. Reliance Industries vaulted 7.83% at Rs2,601, L&T shot up by 7.53% at Rs3,331, HDFC Bank added 7.42% at Rs1,474 and Cipla rose 7.24% at Rs193. However, TCS, Ambuja Cement, Wipro, HDFC and Infosys slipped marginally.

Capital good stocks were the star attraction during the day and rallied sharply. Punj Lloyd soared 13.08% at Rs387, Crompton Greaves jumped 10.29% at Rs365, Suzlon Energy added 9.84% at Rs1,741 and AIA Engineering gained 8.50% at Rs1,262.

Over 1.80 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Power Grid Corporation (1.63 crore shares), Unitech (1.38 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (1.26 crore shares) and IKF Technologies (1.16 crore shares).

Unitech was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs447 crore followed by Reliance Energy (Rs396 crore), United Breweries (Rs366 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs297 crore) and Reliance Capital (Rs235 crore).