Back to square one

A late bout of hectic buying in power, oil & gas, fast moving consumer goods and other heavyweights triggered a major rally in the Sensex, which otherwise lingered in the negative territory for a better part of the day. On the back of weak Asian indices, the Sensex witnessed extreme volatility in early trades. After resuming weak at 8,840 the index fell sharply and touched the intra-day low of 8,702. Thereafter the index began to gain sharply on substantial buying, taking the benchmark index to the day's high of 9,042. While the market remained subdued thereafter, the Sensex on fresh buying support rebounded sharply at close. The Sensex finally ended the session with marginal loss of 12 points at 8,903, while the Nifty advanced 15 points to close at 2,708.

Sectoral indices posted mixed results for the day. BSE Power led the pack with a surge of 1.94% followed by BSE Oil & Gas, which gained 1.37%, and BSE FMCG, which moved up 1.09%. BSE Teck, BSE HC, BSE Auto, BSE IT and BSE PSU gained marginally and closed in the positive territory. Among the losers, BSE Reality and BSE Bankex dropped over 3% each.

Leading the surge, Reliance Infrastructure flared up 4% at Rs504.60. Among other major gainers Maruti Suzuki India shot up by 3.64% at Rs529.95, Tata Power rose 3.57% at Rs653.45, Tata Consultancy Services jumped by 2.79% at Rs520.70 and Bharti Airtel added 2.73% at Rs636. National Thermal Power Corporation, Wipro, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, Reliance Industries Ltd and Infosys gained 1-2% each. Select frontline counters, however, witnessed profit taking. Satyam Computers dropped 4.57% at Rs229.60, while ICICI Bank declined 3.87% at Rs322.55. DLF, Mahindra & Mahindra, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank ended with steady losses.

Among other major gainers Spice Telecom soared 19.10% at Rs30.55, United Spirits surged 14.97% at Rs804.70, EIH rose 7.70% at Rs100 and Indian Oil Corporation added 7.14% at Rs406.55.

Over 1.65 crore shares of Unitech changed hands on the BSE followed by GVK Power & Infrastructure (1.19 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (1.09 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (0.88 crore shares) and Reliance Capital (55.81 lakh shares).