Sunny day for bulls

After crashing by over 550 points in the last two sessions, the market witnessed a strong relief rally led by across-the-board buying since early trades. The bounce back from the recent sell-off was mainly in line with the recovery in the major Asian indices, which were up around 2-4% each.

Three main cues seem to have decided the course today. One--India getting a green signal from NSG. Two-the West Bengal government arriving at some sort of agreement with Trinamul Congress’ head Mamta Banerjee over the land row at Tata plant at Singur and three--the US government taking over Fannie, Freddie (the giant quasi-public mortgage finance companies), as their failure could have left a global impact. The Sensex opened 494 points above its previous close and gained further on sustained buying support. The high of the day was 623 points above its previous close, while the low of the day was 434 points higher than the previous close. The Sensex finally closed 461 points higher at 14,944. The 50-stock Nifty closed 130 points up at 4,482.

The market breadth was positive after several sessions. Of the 2,767 stocks traded on the BSE, where 1,656 stocks advanced, 1,039 stocks declined. 72 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices closed with significant gains. The BSE Bankex, the leading sectoral index, soared 4.06% followed by the BSE CG index (up 3.70%), the BSE Power index (up 3.36%), the BSE Reality index (up 3.17%) and the BSE IT index (up 2.28%).

All the 30 Sensex stocks ended in the green. Attracting strong buying support Sterlite Industries surged 6.16% at Rs624, State Bank of India shot up by 4.90% at Rs1,593, ICICI Bank jumped by 4.64% at Rs719, NTPC advanced by 4.64% at Rs181.50, Larsen & Toubro scaled up 4.54% at Rs2,735, HDFC Bank zoomed 4.43% at Rs1,302.70, Tata Motors added 4.30% at Rs438, Reliance Infrastructure vaulted 4.25% at Rs1,059 and HDFC firmed up by 4.12% at Rs2,375. Other front-line stocks also moved up 2-3% each.

Over 93.17 lakh shares of Reliance Natural Resources changed hands on the BSE followed by Austral Coke (90.07 lakh shares), IFCI (79.91 lakh shares), Reliance Power (57.62 lakh shares) and Karuturi Ventures (51.05 lakh shares).