Market overcomes early blues

The market witnessed a dramatic turnaround in mid-morning trades and rallied sharply over 500 points to touch the day's high of 17,674 towards the close. The market remained firm for better part of the trading session, as positive Asian markets created a perfect platform for the bulls to pursue buying. The Sensex resumed 175 points higher at 17,524, but shed over 211 points to touch the day's low of 17,138 amid heavy selling in banking and consumer durable stocks. However, the index rolled back into the green on buoyancy in heavyweight, oil, and IT stocks. The Sensex finally closed the session with gains of 1.74% and was up 302 points at 17,651, while the Nifty advanced 1.76% and was up 90 points to close at 5,201.

Surprisingly, the market breadth was negative. Of the 2,740 stocks traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,070 stocks advanced, 1,602 stocks declined and 68 stocks ended unchanged. Out of the 13 sectoral indices, eleven indices ended higher while two indices eased on profit taking. The BSE oil & gas index gained 3.60% followed by the BSE IT index (up 1.90%), the BSE Teck index (up 1.32%) and the BSE HC index (up 1.26%). However, the BSE Bankex index and the BSE CD index ended at lower levels.

Heavyweights participated in the late rally and notched up significant gains. ACC soared 5.69% at Rs818, Reliance Industries advanced 5.02% at Rs2,552, Ambuja Cement added 4.43% at Rs123, Reliance Energy scaled up 4.29% at Rs1,623, Grasim rose 4.21% at Rs2,912, Maruti Suzuki jumped 4.07% at Rs798 and Wipro gained 4.06% at Rs440. Among the laggards Bajaj Auto dropped 4.04% at Rs2,203, HDFC Bank lost 3.54% at Rs1,423 while, HLL and M&M were marginally down.

Over 3.62 crore Tulsi Extrusion shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (1.79 crore shares), Reliance Power (1.77 crore shares), IRB Infrastructure (1.60 crore shares) and Centurion Bank Of Punjab (1.50 crore shares).

Reliance Power was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs782 crore followed by Tulsi Extrusion (Rs465 crore), IRB Infrastructure (Rs296 crore), RNRL (Rs241 crore) and Reliance Capital (Rs218 crore).