Market upbeat

The market displayed positive trend all through the session today. Taking firm cues from firm Asian indices, as US market, the Sensex opened 136 points higher at 16829 and rallied to touch the day's high of 16908 on buying in information technology (IT) and oil & gas stocks. It however remained range-bound with positive bias thereafter. Towards the close, the Sensex ended the session at 16853, up 160 points. Nifty was at 5007 at closing bell, up 48 points.

Advancing shares outnumbered declining shares today. Of the total 2,852 stocks traded on BSE, where 1,660 stocks advanced, 1,104 stocks declined. 88 stocks ended unchanged. Broadly speaking, IT, oil & gas, Teck stocks posted gains while health care, consumer durables and banking stocks posted marginal gains. Realty bourses posted losses for the day. While auto and metal indexes were down marginally.

Heavyweights witnessed strong buying interest. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries soared 6.09% to Rs1,390.85, Tata Consultancy Services rose 3.98% to Rs610.40, ICICI Bank was up by 3.12% to Rs864.80, Wipro jumped 2.71% to Rs582.50, ONGC added 2.49% to trade at Rs1,186.15, while Infosys Technologies, Tata Power, Reliance Industries, Hindustan Unilever, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Tata Steel and Bharti Airtel registered gains of 1-2%. However, State Bank of India slipped 2.26% to Rs2,090.85, Grasim Industries lost 1.60% to quote at Rs2,788.80, Jaiprakash Associates was down 1.35% to trade at Rs234.15, while Reliance Communications, Tata Motors and ACC moved marginally down.

Ispat Industries was most traded share with over 1.32 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.14 crore shares), Suzlon Energy (0.98 crore shares), IDBI Bank (0.97 crore shares) and GTL Infrastructure (0.90 crore shares)