Market rebounds and how!

The market heaved a big sigh of relief after three consecutive sessions of battering, as a sharp turn-around in noon trades helped the Sensex gain nearly 450 points and close on a firm note above 13800 mark. The bounce-back came after a steep fall of over 1000 points in the market since the slide began last week. Earlier in the first half, the market was range-bound after a firm opening. After resuming 149 points higher over its last close at 13400, the index remained steady and moved between 13600-13700 in afternoon. While the market fluctuated sharply thereafter, the change of guard to firm bullish sentiment came in noon trades as strong buying in realty, metal, consumer durable, power and capital goods stocks spurred the index to an intra-day high of 13903. The Sensex finally ended the session with gains of 3.38% or 453 points to 13854 whereas Nifty soared 137 points to 4111.



The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,634 stocks traded on the BSE 1,956 stocks advanced, 602 stocks declined and 76 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices were back in action and moved up sharply. The BSE Realty rose 9.38%- the highest for any sector. The BSE Metal jumped 5.53%, BSE CD added 5.12%, BSE Power gained 4.60% and BSE CG was up 4.11%.



Several index heavyweights notched up significant gains. Among major gainers DLF flared up 11.44% to Rs300.10, Reliance Infrastructure zoomed 9.02% to Rs1,053.85, JP Associates shot up by 7.93% to Rs177.25, ICICI Bank flared up 7.60% to Rs679.80, HDFC vaulted 7.28% to Rs2,368, Tata Steel advanced 5.69% to Rs358.20, Reliance Communications scaled up 5.04% to Rs249, Grasim Industries surged 5.03% to Rs2,574.60 and Tata Motors added 4.41% to trade at Rs273.60. Other front-line stocks also moved up by 2-4% each. HDFC Bank however dropped 1.03% to Rs1,360.40.


Over 37 lakh shares of JP Associates changed hands on the BSE followed by DLF (34 lakh shares), Tata Steel (29 lakh shares), Reliance Communications (21 lakh shares) and ICICI Bank (20 lakh shares).