Market snaps seven days’ losses

The market showed strong optimism today despite witnessing a fall in trades yesterday. The Sensex had a gap-up opening despite weak global cues. However, buoyancy in heavyweights triggered a major rally and the Sensex rose sharply by mid-morning. Maintaining its upward bias thereafter, extensive buying in power, oil & gas and capital goods stocks propelled the index to touch an intra-day high of 8,988, up 537 points for the day. The Sensex finally ended the session with gains of 5.49% and was up 464 points at 8,915. Nifty moved up 140 points to close at 2,693.

However the market breadth was negative. Of the 2,566 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,293 stocks declined, whereas 1,177 stocks advanced. Ninety six stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices notched up significant gains. BSE Power was the biggest gainer and soared 6.21% followed by BSE Oil & Gas (up 5.69%), BSE CG (up 5.59%), BSE Teck (up 5.22%), BSE PSU (up 5.04%) and BSE IT (up 4.85%).

Among the 30 stocks in the Sensex basket, 26 ended at higher levels. Reliance Infrastructure led the upsurge and flared by 14.07% at Rs485.20. Among other major gainers, Reliance Communications surged 13.64% at Rs207, Sterlite Industries moved up by 9.10% at Rs218.75, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) advanced 8.80% at Rs150.25, Maruti Suzuki India vaulted 8.73% at Rs525, HDFC shot up by 8.49% at Rs1,399, State Bank of India added 8.29% at Rs1,183.15, Tata Consultancy Services gained 7.89% at Rs506.55 and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd rose 7.29% at Rs1,281.25. While, DLF slipped 3.41% at Rs198.20, JP Associates lost 2.18% at Rs58.25, ACC dropped 2.08% at Rs399.45 and Tata Power was marginally down at Rs630.90.

Power stocks saw strong buying action during the day. Followed by Reliance Infrastructure, GVK power & Infrastructure surged 13.28% at Rs14.67, NTPC soared 8.80% at Rs150.25, Suzlon Energy jumped 8.04% at Rs49.70 and Power Grid Corporation of India added 6.28% at Rs73.60. Oil & gas stocks also logged significant gains with Reliance Industries, ONGC, Reliance Petroleum, Cairn India, BPCL, IOC and GAIL soaring over 3-6% each.

Over 2.04 crore share of Unitech changed hands on the BSE followed by GVK Power & Infrastructure (1.71 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (1.51 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.33 crore shares) and DLF (0.71 crore shares).