Market at two-year high

Today's major news

Expanded index of industrial production (IIP) basket from April data

Larsen & Toubro bags Rs1,400-crore order; the stock surges 1.43%

Soros and Kaiser in race to buy 4% stake in BSE

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Global signals

Mining and banking stocks pushed European market higher today. As of writing, FTSE 100 was up by 0.17%.

Asian indices had a mixed outing—Shanghai Composite, Straits Times and Hang Seng closed higher while Jakarta Composite, Kospi and Nikkei posted losses.

US stock futures point to a higher start for Wall Street. Investors are looking forward to data related to February personal income and consumption that will be declared later in the day.

Indian indices

Indian markets rose to their highest level since February 2008 on firm global markets and buying in consumer durables and fast moving consumer durables.

On firm global leads, Sensex opened almost flat, merely 6 points lower, but soon turned positive to touch the day’s as well as two-year’s high of 17793. Nifty also touched its two-year high of 5329 in afternoon trades. However, some of these gains were trimmed towards the close with the Sensex quoting at 17711, 67 points higher at finishing line. The Nifty closed the session 21 points higher at 5303.

Market sentiment

Despite trading green all through the day and the indices hitting their two-year high trailing stocks outnumbered advancing scrips. Around 62% of stocks on the BSE trailed vis-a-vis 34% advancing. Around 2% scrips traded unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

Information technology (IT), Tech and public sector unit (PSU) were the three sectors that were down—BSE IT 1.74%, BSE TECk 1.33% and BSE PSU .01%. Consumer durables (CD) index was up by 1.97% — the most for any sector —followed by fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) counter that advanced 1.05%. Other sectors were up less than a percent.

LIC Housing Finance was the star stock of the day, up by 8.57%, followed by Glenmark Pharma that was up by 5.19% and Nestle India up 4.91%. On losers’ list, NMDC was down by 4.56%, followed by Torrent Power that fell 4.02% and Punj Lloyd that shed 3.86%.

Viewing volumes

Ispat Industries was the most actively traded share with over 0.57 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by public sector undertaking NMDC (0.41 crore shares), India’s second largest realty major Unitech (0.35 crore shares), wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy (0.34 crore shares) and Industrial finance company IFCI (0.32 crore shares).