Market ends firm as IT stocks rally

The rise in the inflation rate could not dampen the market spirits as the Sensex staged gains of around 600 points at close. The market reported a solid performance on the back of strong all-round buying even though other major Asian indices exhibited a subdued trend in the morning trades. The market opened with a gap of 172 points at 17,821, but slipped immediately on selling in heavyweight, realty, and power stocks and touched the day's low of 17,535. However, buying at lower levels in technology, metal, auto and oil stocks saw the Sensex shed all of its losses and enter into the green again. Sustained buying thereafter helped the Sensex to regain the 18,000 mark and touch the intra-day high of 18,312. The Sensex finally closed the session at 18,233, up 584 points. The Nifty ended the session up 180 points at 5,317.

The market breadth was negative, with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of 1.43:1. Of the 2,795 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,113 stocks advanced, 1,606 stocks declined and 76 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE IT index moved up by 5.77% followed by the BSE Teck index (up 3.94%), the BSE Metal index (up 3.63%) and the BSE Auto index (up 3.54%). However, the BSE CD index and the BSE Realty index closed in the negative territory and shed 0.05% each.

Among the tech stocks Satyam Computer shot up 8.18% at Rs421, TCS soared 6.17% at Rs929, Infosys surged 5.80% at Rs1,591 and Wipro jumped 5.79% at Rs437. Among the other gainers Tata Motors moved up by 6.82% at Rs754, Hindalco scaled up 6.73% at Rs177, Maruti Suzuki was up 6.60% at Rs905, Tata Steel advanced by 5.86% at Rs776, ONGC gained 5.68% at Rs1,045 and HDFC advanced by 5.44% at Rs2,998. However, ACC slipped 3.72% at Rs754, followed by Ambuja Cement and HDFC Bank, which were down 0.79% and 0.05% respectively.

Over 1.47 crore Ispat Industries shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (1.28 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.07 crore shares), Hindustan Futuristic Communication (93.67 lakh shares) and Future Capital (88.84 lakh shares).

Valuewise, Future Capital registered a turnover of Rs784 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Energy (Rs246 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs178 crore), RNRL (Rs177 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs162 crore).