Up for second day

Today's major news

HDFC extends home loan offer at 8.25%; the stock rises 1.30%

Larsen & Toubro to invest $400 million; the stock closes 1.93% higher

F&O Inclusion lights up Videocon Industries; the stock shots up 8.67%

Areva T&D hardens on winning order; the stock jumps 4.07%

Tata Consultancy Services to review salary hikes by month-end; the stock finishes the day 0.44% higher

Post-market summary

Global signals

European indices rose for the third consecutive day, after forecast beating results from BNP Paribas led banking stocks to rise. At the time of writing this report FTSE 100 is up by 0.76%.

All the major Asian indices closed higher. Shanghai Composite was closed today. SGX Nifty closed 18 points higher.

US stock futures opened higher ahead of key data on industrial production for January that will be declared later in the day.

Indian indices

Capitalising on buoyant global cues, Indian indices closed higher for the second straight session on gains in heavyweights like Tata Steel, Hindalco Industries and Reliance Industries. The Sensex opened three points higher at 16229 and never looked back. Tremendous buying in consumer durable and metal stocks helped the Sensex to touch the day’s high of 16481. At finishing line, the Sensex was at 16429, 202 points higher over its yesterday’s close. Nifty closed 58 points higher at 4914.

Market sentiment

The market breadth was positive. Of 2,910 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,702 stocks advanced, whereas 1,117 stocks declined. Ninety-one stocks closed unchanged

Sectoral & stock screening

Metal and consumer durables drew interest, while realty and information technology scrips fell slightly out of favour. Of the 13 sector indices only BSE BSE Realty (down 0.93%) and BSE IT (down 0.36%) were lower. The remaining 10 sector indices closed higher. BSE Consumer Durable (CD) surged by 3.59%--the most for any indices--followed by BSE Metal that rose 3.22% for the day.

On stocks front, the top three gainers were Videocon Industries (up 8.67%), Godrej Industries (up 8.20%) and Mundra Port (up 7.35%). The top two losers were Indiabulls Real Estate (down 3.29%) and Bharat Forge (down 2.16%).

Viewing volumes

Wind power major Suzlon Energy was the most actively traded share with over 0.53 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by India’s second largest infrastructure company Unitech (0.35 crore shares), Steel major Tata Steel (0.33 crore shares), industrial finance company IFCI (0.28 crore shares) and India’s leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel (0.28 crore shares