New year binge continues

Maintaining its upward trend since the New year, Sensex opened on a firm note at 10,110 and rallied further on substantial buying in metal and oil stocks. Despite slowdown in foreign institutional investors’ inflows, Sensex rallied further to touch an intra-day high of 10,306 on substantial buying support. Market remained firm above 10,100-level for the entire trading session, as firm Asian and European indices kept investor mood upbeat. However, profit booking at higher levels dragged the index to its day's low of 10,069, above 111 points its previous close. The market recovered in afternoon but Sensex shed some of its profits towards the close. Sensex finally wrapped up the session with a gain of 317 points at 10,276. Nifty gained 75 points to close at 3,121.



Among sectoral indices, BSE Metal led the upsurge with 5.54% gains followed by BSE Oil (up 5.10%), BSE Bankex (up 3.53%) and BSE CG (up 2.83%). Market breadth was extremely positive. Of 2,613 stocks traded on BSE 1,661 stocks advanced, whereas 878 stocks declined. Seventy-four stocks ended unchanged.



Out of 30 Sensex stocks, 23 managed to end in the green while 7 stocks ended in the red. Sterlite Industries was the lead gainer, soaring 10.93% for the day to Rs305. Tata Power jumped 7.87% at Rs831, Tata Steel shot up by 7.71% at Rs247.35, ONGC advanced 7.66% at Rs732.15, JP Associates moved up by 7.27% at Rs93.75, Reliance Industries added 6.93% at Rs1372.90 and ICICI Bank gained 5.92% at Rs499.10. Among laggards, Satyam Computer Services was the major loser and dropped 6% at Rs166.90, while Bharti Airtel, DLF, NTPC, Hindustan Unilever, ITC and Ranbaxy Laboratories slipped marginally.


Over 3.17 crore shares of Unitech changed hands on BSE followed by IFCI (2.50 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.87 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (1.29 crore shares) and Satyam Computer Services (1.12 crore shares).