Fire up

The market seemed to be in no mood to give up the gusto it exhibited towards the closing yesterday. It simply ignored the pessimistic signs—negative Nikkei —and picked the optimistic signs—drop in crude oil prices and positive Hang Seng and Straits Times. The benchmark 30-stock Sensex opened 111 points higher and after remaining range-bound for the first one-third of the session, went ballistic and gained 450 points in the second one-third of the session. Relentless buying in index heavyweights, reality, banking, capital goods and public sector units stocks propelled the index to an intra-day high of 15106, up 607 points over its last close. In the last one-third of the session, the index maintained its high and ended 552 points higher than its previous close. Following almost a ditto pattern, the 50-stock Nifty finished the day 155 points higher at 4,504.

Realty and banking stocks played instrumental role in the home-run gains posted by the Sensex and the Nifty. The BSE Realty and the BSE Bankex, the sectoral indices of realty and banking stocks ended 6.93% and 5.94% higher respectively. In fact all the 13 sectors registered gains for today.

The market breadth was visibly positive, as of the total 2,732 stocks that trade on the BSE, 61% stocks (1,664 stocks) advanced while only 36% stocks (995 stocks) declined. 73 stocks ended unchanged.

Among the 30 stocks in the Sensex only two—Ranbaxy Laboratories and Tata Motors--ended negative. The State Bank of India led the upsurge among the index stocks and flared up by 7.44% at Rs1,521 followed by ICICI Bank and DLF each of which gained more than 7% for the day. Among the other major gainers, ONGC surged 6.97% at Rs1,101.55, JP Associates moved up by 6.83% at Rs173.65, Reliance Infrastructure advanced 5.99% at Rs1,041.70, Maruti Suzuki vaulted 4.84% at Rs664.45, HDFC shot up by 4.66% at Rs2,445.15, Larsen & Toubro added 4.63% at Rs2,680.70 and Tata Consultancy Services rose 4.23% at Rs848.80. ACC, Reliance Communications, Wipro, BHEL, HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, Grasim Industries, Infosys, Tata Power and Mahindra & Mahindra spurted over 2-4% each.

Reality stocks were the star attraction for the day and rallied sharply. Orbit Corporation soared 16.80% at Rs304.55, HDIL jumped 16.27% at Rs325.85, Indiabulls Real Estate added 9.64% at Rs322.25 and Unitech gained 7.14% at Rs169.60. Sobha Developers, Omaxe and Peninsula Land were up over 5-7% each.

Over 2.05 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Resurgere Mines & Minerals India (1.62 crore shares), IFCI (1.05 crore shares), Infrastructure Development Finance Company (90.39 lakh shares) and Marksans Pharma (85.23 lakh shares).