Sensex scales new high

The market exhibited awesome display in anticipation of more foreign fund inflows if US Federal Reserve cuts the interest rate further as expected and achieved a new peak on the back of all-round buying. The benchmark share index, Sensex, rose to its record high of 20,333 as realty and banking stocks registered heavy gains. The market opened with a positive gap of 118 points and kept its upward bias for the entire day. The realty major Ansal Properties and Infrastructure, Unitech, and Omexe registered the biggest gains in today's trades. Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank were also the major contributors in today's rally. The index moved within a range in the afternoon. However, Sensex witnessed hectic buying towards the close and ended the session near its all-time high with a gain of 360 points at 20,291. The Nifty closed the session at 6,097, up 137 points.

Among sectoral indices, Realty index led the upsurge with a gain of 3.04% at 12,182 followed by the BSE Bankex index (up 2.54% at 11,779), the BSE Metal index (up 1.89% at 19,055) and the BSE PSU index (up 1.80% at 10,086). The market breadth was extremely positive. Of the 2,914 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,980 stocks advanced, 896 stocks declined and 38 stocks ended unchanged.

Out of the 30 Sensex stocks, 25 managed to end in the green while five stocks ended with losses. Bharti Airtel was the leading gainer and soared 6.21% at Rs1,031. HDFC Bank jumped 4.81% at Rs1,775, ONGC shot up by 3.68% at Rs1,238, Hindalco advanced 3.34% at Rs200, ICICI Bank moved up by 3.32% at Rs1,316, Maruti Suzuki added 3.17% at Rs1,079 and Bajaj Auto gained 3% at Rs2,794. Among the laggards DLF dropped 1.20% at Rs1,014. Infosys, BHEL, Ambuja Cement and Reliance Energy slipped marginally.

Over 3.23 crore Tata Teleservices shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IKF Technologies (2.73 crore shares), Himachal Futuristic (2.43 crore shares), GV Films (1.77 crore shares) and IFCI (1.72 crore shares).

Lanko Infrastructure registered a turnover of Rs210 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs209 crore), Tata Teleservices (Rs192 crore), IFCI (Rs186 crore) and Reliance Energy (Rs128 crore).