Markets end in positive

The market displayed a positive trend almost for the entire session. Taking cue from firm US indices, Sensex opened 115 points higher at 8275 and continued to rally to touch the day's high of 8440 on buying in auto and banking stocks. Thereafter, the market remained range-bound with a positive bias. However the announcement of index of industrial production (IIP) numbers for January 2009 did little for the market despite IIP reporting a -0.5% growth. However, profit booking in some of the frontline stocks dragged the market to its intra-day low of 8275. Sensex bounced back towards the close, as short covering in heavyweights helped the index to recover and end the session at 8344, up 183 points. Nifty finally settled at 2617, up 44 points.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,523 stocks traded on BSE, 1,262 stocks declined, whereas 1,162 stocks advanced. Ninety nine stocks ended unchanged. Among sectoral indices, BSE Auto notched up by 3..70% followed by BSE Bankex (up 3.33%) and BSE Oil & Gas (up 3.21%). The remaining indices gained 1-2% each except BSE CD and BSE Teck, which had a negative run today.

The heavyweights witnessed strong buying interest. ICICI Bank soared 8.10% at Rs284.25, Sterlite Industries rose 7.26% at Rs262.20, Tata Motors was up 6.77% at Rs145.95, Maruti Suzuki India shot up by 5.83% at Rs688.65, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries jumped 4.78% at Rs1,025.45, Reliance Communications added 4.57% at Rs138.30, Reliance Industries gained 4.17% at Rs1201.95, ACC moved up by 4.15% at Rs541 and Hindustan Unilever was up 4.09% at Rs225.35. However, Bharti Airtel slipped 6.37% at Rs550.30 and Tata Power lost 2.52% at Rs607.10.

Over 3.75 crore shares of Satyam Computer Services changed hands on BSE followed by Infrastructure Development Finance Company (1.61 crore shares), Rolta India (98 lakh shares), ICICI Bank (79 lakh shares) and Cal Refineries (75 lakh shares).