Market measly up

The market appeared to be heading towards a negative close, as a strong bout of selling saw Sensex enter into the negative territory, though for a while.

Sensex had a firm start and it continued to rally for the second consecutive session today. Taking cue from strong Asian markets, Sensex rallied sharply in morning trades, touching an intra-day high of 9087. Realty and information technology (IT) stocks rallied sharply but capital goods and auto stocks remained subdued as traders booked profits. However, Sensex saw profit booking towards the close and entered into the negative territory to touch the day's low of 8900. It however recovered on buying in few pivotal stocks and closed the session at 9002, up 25 points. Nifty ended the session at 2807, up 12 points.

The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,561 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,354 stocks advanced, 1,105 stocks declined and 102 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the 13 sectoral indices ended in green. BSE Realty gained 2.19% followed by BSE IT (up 1.58%) and BSE Teck (down 0.83%). However, BSE CG index lost 2.62%, BSE Auto (down 0.72%) and BSE FMCG (down 0.28%).

Among Sensex stocks, Sterlite Industries was the leading gainer and its stock price soared by 4.18% at Rs314.30. Among other stocks, HDFC advanced 2.53% at Rs1,388, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries jumped 2.33% at Rs1,020.10, while Maruti Suzuki India, Tata Consultancy Services, National Thermal Power Corporation, Infosys, JP Associates, DLF and Reliance Industries closed with marginal gains. Among laggards, Larsen & Toubro slipped 4.14% at Rs609.55, Bharat Heavy Electricals shed 3.15% at Rs1,412.65, Tata Motors declined by 2.75% at Rs171.60, Reliance Communications fell by 2.03% at Rs156.60 and Mahindra & Mahindra lost 1.89% at Rs355.15.

Over 1.79 crore shares of Cals Refineries changed hands on BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (96 lakh shares), Unitech (84 lakh shares), Firstsource Solutions (81 lakh shares) and NIIT (72 lakh shares).