Market overcomes early blues, soars 138 points

The market witnessed a dramatic turnaround in afternoon, as substantial buying at lower levels helped the index scale above 15000 at the close and clock gains of more than 150 points during the last hour of the trading session. The Sensex began the trading session 116 points lower at 14755 and shed another 156 points to slip below the 14600 mark and touch the day's low of 14599 amid weak US and Asian markets. While the market languished in the negative territory and was on a recovery mode, the index rolled back into the green in late trades and surged to an intra-day high of 15026 on fresh buoyancy in heavyweight, realty, capital goods and health care stocks. The Sensex finally closed the session with gains of 0.93% and was up 138 points at 15009, while Nifty advanced 42 points to close at 4573.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,873 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,130 stocks advanced, 688 stocks declined and 55 stocks ended unchanged. Out of the 13 sectoral indices, 10 indices ended higher while 3 indices eased on profit taking. The BSE Realty gained 3.29% followed by BSE CG (up 3.23%), BSE HC (up 2.60%) and BSE Power (up 2.30%). However, BSE Metal, BSE CD and BSE IT ended at lower levels.

Heavyweights participated in the late rally and notched up significant gains. Ranbaxy Laboratories soared 6.06% at Rs282.55, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries advanced 4.14% at Rs1306.65, Hindustan Unilever added 3.73% at Rs248.65, Reliance Infrastructure scaled up 3.39% at Rs1,273.45, Larsen & Toubro rose 3.30% at Rs1,455.90 and DLF jumped 3.30% at Rs416.15. Maruti Suzuki India, Reliance Communications, Grasim Industries, JP Associates, ACC, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel and ICICI Bank gained over 2% each. Among laggards, Sterlite Industries dropped 5.91% at Rs661.30, Hindalco Industries lost 3.54% at Rs89.85, Tata Steel declined by 3.53% at Rs470.70 and Wipro was marginally down at Rs390.90.

Realty stocks registered strong gains in the late rally. Sobha Developers hit the upper limit of 10% at Rs247.15. While Mahindra Lifespace Developers advanced 8.56% at Rs327.95, Omaxe gained 5.72% at Rs114.65. Akruti City, Orbit Corporation, Parsvnath Developers and Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd were up over 4% each. Among capital goods stocks Lakshmi Machine Works, Suzlon Energy, Kalptaru Power Transmission, Areva T&D India, BEML, ABB, Everest Kanto Cylinder, Walchand and Punj Lloyd gained 4-8% each.

Over 3.86 crore share of Satyam Computer Services (Satyam) changed hands on the BSE followed by Reliance Natural Resources Ltd (RNRL; 3.33 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (3.30 crore shares), Ispat Industries (2.87 crore shares) and Unitech (2.50 crore shares).

Suzlon Energy was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs435 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs342 crore), RNRL (Rs304 crore), Satyam (Rs275 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs255 crore).