Market Close: Cheers to Lalu's Railway Budget..

On back of strong global cues, market had a modest start. Sensex traded ranged in green throughout the day. But in the last hour of trade, there was some profit booking which led the indices to loose some gains. Mid caps and small caps outsmarted the large caps. Market once again flared ahead of budget. Realty, IT, Power, Metals and Oil & gas sector were among gainers. Tea sector witnessed huge buying. Railway budget was presented today by the famous Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and as usual it was cherished as it proved to be a good one. Major future plans were chalked, which also provided some hope for orders to IT companies like TCS , Wipro , Infosys and Satyam. Asian indices closed in positive. Europe is trading in green.

Sensex ended up by 156 points at 17806.18. It was helped up by gains in Grasim (3042.7,+5 percent), Rel Energy (1697.25,+5 percent), BHEL (2180.55,+5 percent), Infosys (1662.1,+3 percent) and HDFC Bk (1455,+2 percent). Restricting the gains were Bharti Tele (838.8,-1 percent), Hero Honda (734.1,-1 percent), HDFC (2574.3501,0 percent), Tata Motors (702.1,0 percent) and SBI (2119.8501,0 percent).

The Railway Budget proved to be beneficiary to some industries like Steel, Technology, Capital goods and Infrastucutre. Budget chalked out plans to introduced steel coaches by 2010. This will benefit Tata Steel , Jindal Steel , Sail and few more. The other measures to see positives are.. Automated signalling..Kernex Micro. ETA display in long-run trains to benefit Mic Electronics. CCTV, metal detectors installation is expected to benefit Zicom . Anti-fire protection to benefit Nitin Fire Protection. The budget will have online control of trains in 2 years. It plans to link trains via software communication by 2009. It plans to start ticket confirmation via mobile phones. The Budet is planning 'smart card' based ticket system. SMART CARDS will benefit Bartronics.

McLeod Russel India Ltd (McLeod) is largest a tea plantation company in the world. Mcleod. It has around 52 tea estates with total capacity of 70mn kg. Tea production is expected to be stagnant with limited land availability. This has led to good realisation and it is expected to futher go up. For short term Kenya's drought problem and political issues has affected production there. McLeod Russel sees a rise of Rs 5-7 for the rest of the year in tea prices. On this hopes the stock rose and locked at upper circuit.

Technically Speaking: Markets closed 155 points in green. Sensex made an intra day high of 17860 and low of 17679. The breadth was in favor of Advances, as there were 1613 Advances against 1110 Declines. Market turnover was low at Rs 4818 cr. Sensex support stands at 17450. Resistance lies at 18000.