Buoyancy lifts market above 19,700

The market reported a solid performance on the back of a strong all-round buying even as major Asian indices exhibited a subdued trend in morning trades. Shrugging off the global cues, the market opened with a gap of 99 points at 19,629. It remained positive but traded in a narrow range till the afternoon. However, heavy buying in heavyweights, pharma, banking, and public sector unit stocks towards the close, lifted the Sensex to the day's high of 19,791. Most of the second-rung stocks also witnessed buying interest, as the BSE Mid-Cap index rose by 1.67% while the BSE Small-Cap index gained 2.88%. The Sensex finally closed the session at 19,738, up 209 points or 1.07%. The Nifty ended the session at 5,940, up 82 points or 1.39%.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,891 stocks that traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 2,165 stocks advanced, 685 stocks declined and 41 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE HC notched up gains of 2.40% at 3,951 followed by the BSE CD index (up 2.36% at 6,226), the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 2.28% at 12,940) and the BSE PSU index (up 2.27% at 10,096).

Heavyweights witnessed lot of buying interest. ONGC soared 4.29% at Rs1,206, Tata Motors rose 3.95% at Rs772, SBI was up 2.85% at Rs2,384 and Hindalco shot up by 2.81% at Rs199. Cipla jumped 2.46% at Rs189, NTPC added 2.15% at Rs244 and L&T gained 1.90% at Rs4,310. However, Tata Steel, Infosys, Satyam Computer, Grasim, Reliance Energy, Ambuja Cement and HLL closed marginally down.

Over 8.99 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Tata Teleservices (3.72 crore shares), Wire & Wireless India (1.64 crore shares), Hindustan Motors (1.47 crore shares) and Reliance Natural Resources (1.20 crore shares).

Valuewise, Ispat Industries registered a turnover of Rs569 crore on the BSE followed by Essar Oil (Rs259 crore), Videocon Industries (Rs244 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs214 crore) and Mundra Port (Rs210 crore).