Market nears 9500

The market exhibited strong optimism on the back of firm Asian indices and triggered a major rally in all sectors. After registering gains of 210 points in the last week, Sensex resumed with a positive gap of 73 points, at 9040. Maintaining its upward bias thereafter, extensive buying in banking, oil & gas, metal and public sector unit stocks saw the index edge past 9400 mark and touch an intra-day high of 9455, up 488 points for the day. Sensex closed for the day with gains of 457 points at 9424. Nifty moved up by 133 points to close at 2940.

Market breadth, the number of advancing shares to declining shares, was exceedingly positive for BSE. Of the 2,642 stocks traded, 1,629 stocks advanced and 899 stocks declined. 114 stocks ended unchanged. Of the 13 sectoral indices, BSE Bankex, the index of banking shares, flared up by 6.66% followed by BSE Oil & Gas (up 6.40%), BSE Metal (up 6.31%) and BSE PSU (up 4.21%). Other indices were up 1-3% each.

Except DLF, other index stocks ended at higher levels. Ranbaxy Laboratories was the day's star performer and shot up by 10.80% at Rs161.05. Among other major gainers, Tata Steel surged 10.39% at Rs194.40, Reliance Infrastructure vaulted by 9.88% at Rs530.60, Hindalco Industries spurted 9.35% at Rs52.05, HDFC jumped by 8.44% at Rs1528.80, Reliance Industries scaled up by 7.56% at Rs1439.80, ICICI Bank advanced by 7.36% at Rs346.65, State Bank of India added 7.33% at Rs1,023.45 and Reliance Communications rose 6.19% at Rs168.15. DLF, the only stock posting loss for the day, slumped by 2.16% at Rs167.40.

Banking stocks sparkled on the back of firm Asian indices. Oriental Bank of Commerce vaulted by 9.55% at Rs110.65, Axis Bank soared 9.04% at Rs374.05, Punjab National Bank zoomed 8.72% at Rs362.25, Bank of Baroda advanced 7.97% at Rs220.70, Union Bank of India shot up by 6.45% at Rs139.55 and HDFC Bank added 5.60% at Rs884.645. Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bank of India and Indian Overseas Bank gained in the range of 4-5% each.

Over 1.78 crore shares of Ballarpur Industries changed hands on BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (1.05 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (98 lakh shares), Satyam Computer Services (78 lakh shares) and GVK Power & Infrastructure (78 lakh shares).