Sensex recovers on short coverings

The market displayed tremendous strength despite weak global cues. The Sensex went into a major recovery mode towards the close and surged over 252 points during the intra-day trades. The market saw a gap-down opening of 359 points and remained in the negative territory for better part of the day on account of heavy selling in heavyweights and IT stocks. Recovery in major banking stocks and short covering in frontline stocks turned the sentiment bullish. The market rallied sharply towards the close and the Sensex surged past the 20,000 mark to touch the day's high of 20,026. The Sensex finally ended the session by gaining 252 points at 19,976, while the Nifty added 66 points at 5,932.

The breadth of the market was neutral. Of the 2,802 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) 1,385 stocks advanced, 1,355 stocks declined, and 62 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Banking index flared up by 3.59%, the BSE PSU surged 2.35%, the BSE Oil & Gas index added 1.70% and the BSE Realty index gained 1.34%. While other sectoral indices were up around 1% each. However, the BSE Teck index ended in negative territory.

The recovery in the market was led by State Bank of India (SBI), which shot up by 8.74% at Rs2,252. Among the major gainers HDFC Bank advanced by 4.97% at Rs1,759, Reliance Energy moved up by 4.78% at Rs1,852, ONGC added 2.70% at Rs1,366, ICICI Bank scaled up by 2.44% at Rs1,331 and Grasim jumped 2.18% at Rs3,746. Select index stocks witnessed selling pressure. Bharti Airtel was the major loser and dropped 5.10% at Rs895 while, ACC, Satyam Computers, HDFC, Wipro, Cipla, M&M, Reliance Communication, Hindalco, and Bajaj Auto ended with marginal losses.

Banking stocks witnessed buying support. Bank Of Baroda scaled up by 6.54% at Rs373, Union Bank jumped by 5.92% at Rs188, Allahabad Bank added 3.59% at Rs104, Indian Overseas Bank gained 2.72% at Rs138 and Andhra Bank was up 2.43% at Rs90.

Over 4.45 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (2.98 crore shares), IFCI (1.16 crore shares), Nocil (1.13 crore shares) and Tata Teleservices (1.05 crore shares).

Reliance Petroleum was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs793 crore followed by Reliance Natural Resources (Rs605 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs391 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs365 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs293 crore).