Mid Caps rally in subdued market

Weak global cues and rise in crude oil prices kept the domestic indices lower today. The Sensex resumed with a positive gap of 19 points at 19,948 but slipped immediately in the red. The persistent selling in heavyweights, banking, and IT stocks dragged the Sensex to its day's low of 19,723 by afternoon. Refinery and fertiliser shares however posted huge gains. The market witnessed some buying interest in late trades, however, the Sensex finally closed the session by shedding 144 points at 19,785. The broad based Nifty ended the session at 5,912, down 26 points.

Surprisingly, the breadth of the market was extremely positive. Of the 2,848 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,801 stocks advanced, 992 stocks declined and 55 stocks ended unchanged. The sectoral indices had a mixed outing. The BSE IT index dropped 1.96% followed by the Bankex index (down 1.54%) and the BSE CD index (down 1.43%). However, the BSE Realty index rallied sharply and gained 2.01% followed by the BSE FMCG index (up 1.83%) and the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 1.46%).

Among the major losers, Reliance Energy shed 3.45% at Rs1,854, Wipro declined 3.13% at Rs456, Infosys fell 3.12% at Rs1,653, HDFC Bank slipped 3.04% at Rs1,696, NTPC dipped 2.85% at Rs269, ICICI Bank lost 2.29% at Rs1,249 and BHEL slumped 1.76% at Rs2,823. Bharti Airtel, however, gained 4.71% at Rs900, followed by ITC up 3.52% at Rs190 while, M&M, ONGC, Tata Steel, Ambuja Cement, L&T ended the day in the positive territory.

Over 3.78 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (2.12 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.96 crore shares), Manglore Refinery (1.84 crore shares) and Essar Oil (1.72 crore shares).

Valuewise, Reliance Petroleum registered a turnover of Rs422 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Energy (Rs374 crore), HDFC (Rs304 crore), GMR Infrastructure (Rs265 crore) and Essar Oil (Rs258 crore).