Bulls strike back

The bulls were back in action after successive days of battering, as the market taking a cue from the buoyant international indices registered phenomenal gains on the back of an all-round buying support. Resuming 298 points above its previous close at 18,737, strong buying led by heavyweights, banking, power, and CG stocks triggered a major rally that propelled the index to an intra-day high of 19,210 in the afternoon trades. Though the Sensex held firm ground above 19,000 for the better part of the trading session, it finally ended at 19,035, up 298 points. The Nifty advanced 76 points to close at 5,695.

Among the gainers in heavyweights, NTPC soared 7.40% at Rs272, HDFC Bank flared up 6.98% at Rs1,579, L&T jumped 4.84% at Rs4,369, HDFC scaled up 2.98% at Rs2,587, SBI surged 2.62% at Rs2,296, ICICI Bank added 2.57% at Rs1,176, Tata Steel jumped 2.18% at Rs833 and Reliance Energy gained 1.92% at Rs1,853. However, Wipro, M&M, and Hindalco eased marginally.

The market breadth was extremely positive, Of the 2,823 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,859 stocks advanced, 897 stocks declined and 67 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral front, the BSE Bankex index led the gainers pack and surged 3.40% at 10,538 followed by the BSE CG (up 3.40% at 20,292), the BSE Power index (up 3.04% at 4,527), the BSE PSU index (up 2.66% at 10,125), the BSE Reality index (up 2.04% at 9,998) and the BSE Metal index (up 1.67% at 17,046).

Over 3.67 Crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (3.36 Crore shares), RPL (1.48 Crore shares), Sunflag (1.26 Crore shares) and Power Grid(93 lakh shares).

Value-wise RNRL registered a turnover of Rs535 crore followed by Reliance Industries (Rs360 crore), RPl (Rs323 crore), NTPC (Rs21 crore), and L&T (Rs200 crore).