Sensex gains 58 points

The market showed a solid performance in today's trades. The Nifty crossed the 6,000 mark again after November 1 in the morning trades and touched the all-time high of 6,027. The Sensex also opened firm at 20,018, up 222 points, tracking global markets which were up around 1% in early trades and touched the day's high of 20,064 quickly. The market remained firm thereafter on sustained buying in realty and pharma stocks. However, the heavy bout of selling towards the close dragged the market into the red and the Sensex touched the day's low of 19,717. But, buying at lower levels helped the Sensex to recover most of its losses and enter into positive territory again. The Sensex finally closed at 19,796, up 58 points, while the Nifty ended the session at 5,955, up 15 points.

The broader market continued to remain in the green. Of the 2,887 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,805 stocks advanced, 1,043 stocks declined and 39 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE Realty index was the biggest gainer and moved up by 3.59% at 11,347 followed by the BSE HC index (up 1% at 11,950). However, the BSE CD index dropped 2.95% at 6,043 and the BSE PSU index was down 1.34% at 9,961.

Select heavyweights attracted buying support. Cipla surged 4.89% at Rs199, ICICI Bank rose 3.24% at Rs1,199, Reliance Energy jumped 3.13% at Rs1,947, HDFC added 2.63% at Rs2,813 and Bharti Airtel moved up by 2.30% at Rs940. Among the laggards Hindalco was down 3.11% at Rs193, Grasim declined by 3.07% at Rs3,680, Bajaj Auto shed 2.57% at Rs2,728 and HDFC Bank dropped 2.41% at Rs1,686.

Over 5.98 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (2.29 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (2.25 crore shares), Chambal Fertilisers (1.84 crore shares) and IKF Technologies (1.82 crore shares).

Reliance Petroleum topped the value list with a turnover of Rs529 crore on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (Rs438 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs322 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (Rs273 crore) and Unitech (Rs207 crore).