Volatile market ends buoyant

The market wiped out losses of over 141 points incurred in the first half after a strong bout of buying led by realty and capital goods stocks triggered wide-spread buying in the market. In a highly volatile trading session, the Sensex had opened 52 points lower at 16687 following weakness in Asian indices and crashed to the day's low of 16598 on relentless selling. The market was on a recovery path thereafter. The Sensex witnessed a sharp turnaround in the afternoon as gains in heavyweights propelled it to an intra-day high of 16584. After gyrating 259 points during intra-day trades, the Sensex gained 45 points to close at 16784 whereas the Nifty ended 12 points higher at 5049.

The market breadth ended positive. Of the 2,758 stocks traded on the BSE 1,569 stocks advanced, 1,128 stocks declined and 61 stocks ended unchanged. Except the BSE IT, Teck, Oil& Gas and Auto indices the rest of the sectoral indices ended in positive territory. The BSE Realty index led the pack and gained 3.00% at 7906 followed by the BSE Metal index (up 2.07% at 15529) and the BSE CG index (up 1.90% at 13929).

BHEL was the star performer amongst the heavyweights and the stock soared 5.55% to Rs1,871.80. Among the other major gainers, Jaiprakash Associates advanced 5.41% to Rs245.65, HDFC jumped 3.73% to Rs2,576.75, DLF rose 3.55% to Rs674.40, HDFC Bank moved up by 2.93% to Rs1,487.65, Larsen & Toubro advanced 2.64% to Rs2,920.55 and ACC added 2.39% to Rs819.45. However, TCS, Wipro and Satyam moved down sharply.

Realty stocks were in demand and scaled higher. Ansal Infrastructure soared 9.38% to Rs163.90, Akruti City flared up 8.09% to Rs1,090.10, Puravankara added 6.05% to Rs277, Unitech gained 4.72% to Rs280.50 and Penland was up 4.71% to Rs107.85. In the metal pack, Ispat zoomed 8.10% to Rs36.70, Jindal Steel shot up by 6.25% to Rs2,254.85, JSW Steel rose 5.26% to Rs877.55 and Nalco gained 3.87% to Rs452.80.

Over 3.45 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat (3.29 crore shares), RNRL (2.72 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (1.43 crore shares) and Orchid Chemicals (1.39 crore shares).