Market pulls back after three-session slump

The market put a halt to its three straight session losses and bounced back sharply on the second last day of the current trading week, as battered heavyweights and sectoral stocks found substantial buying support today. The sharp upmove in the Sensex and Nifty was in line with strong global indices. The Sensex, after dropping over 900 points in the last three sessions, witnessed sharp volatility till mid-morning trades. After a week opening at 15,480, the index tumbled to the day's low of 15,314 and gyrated between zones till mid-morning trades. The market soon recouped its lost ground and rallied sharply in the noon trades as gains in IT, Teck, power, FMCG and metal stocks propelled the index to an intra-day high of 15,815. The Sensex finally wrapped the session with gains of 1.62% or 255 points at 15,770, while Nifty advanced 91 points at 4,677.

Surprisingly the market breadth was weak. Of the 2,711 stocks traded on the BSE 1,392 stocks declined, 1,243 stocks advanced and 76 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices ended positive, except the BSE CD, BSE Realty, BSE Auto and BSE CG. The BSE IT index led the pack and rose 5.01% followed by the BSE Teck index (up 3.45%), the BSE Power index (up 2.89%), the BSE FMCG index (up 2.48%) and the BSE Bankex (up 1.92%).

Reversing the recent downward trend, 23 Sensex stocks advanced with DLF. Reliance Industries, Ambuja Cement, Tata Motors, BHEL, Larsen & Toubro and Mahindra & Mahindra failed to end in the green. Among the other major Sensex gainers, ONGC scaled up 7.46% at Rs953.20, Reliance Infra shot up by 5.68% at Rs1,130.85, NTPC vaulted 5.57% at Rs166.65, JP Associates jumped 3.68% at Rs205.60, Hindustan Unilever flared up 3.23% at Rs230.40, Grasim Industries rose 3.19% at Rs2,246.30, Tata Steel moved up by 3.10% at Rs840.90 and ICICI Bank spurted 3.09% at Rs781.25. ITC, TCS, HDFC Bank, Maruti, Hindalco, SBI, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Cipla gained around 1-2% each.

IT stocks hogged the limelight. NIIT Technology scaled up 9.13% at Rs141, Tech Mahindra surged 7.52% at Rs788.55 and Wipro edged higher by 6.25% at Rs528.40. Infosys, HCL Technologies, Satyam Computer Services and NIIT gained 5% each. Among the Teck stocks, Patni Computer zoomed by 3.71% at Rs276.40, Tanla flared up 3.34% at Rs267.40, Tata Communications added 2.78% at Rs489.95 and Moser Baer firmed up 2.72% at Rs169.90.

Over 1.90 crore IFCI share changed hands on the BSE followed by Anu Lab (1.25 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.21 crore shares), Chambal Fertiliser (1.14 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.12 crores shares), Gokul Refoil (1.11 crore shares) and Reliance Petroleum (1.11 crore shares).