Sensex eyes 18000

Today's major news

Mute debut for Pradip Overseas, the stock closes 2.59% lower on its issue price

Forex kitty falls $1.15 billion to $277 billion

February exports surge 35% to $16 billion

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Global signals

European markets were closed today and will re-open on Tuesday.

All the major Asian indices closed in the positive territory on Monday and Nikkei closed at its 18-month high level. Hang Seng & Shanghai Compsite were closed today. SGX Nifty closed 55 points higher.

US stock futures point to a higher start for the Wall Street on stronger March jobs data.

Indian indices

Taking lead from the strong global indices, Indian markets continue its winning streak on second straight session on Monday to test its 25-month high level.

Sensex opened merely a point higher (at 17694) and moved up on strong US jobs data, pointing to global economic recovery taking hold, and good auto sales numbers and encouraging export figures for February back home. Sensex spurted to its 25-month high of 17949 and Nifty also to its 25-month high of 5378. At closing bell, Sensex quoted at 17936, 243 points higher and Nifty 78 points higher at 5368.

Market sentiment

Advancing shares far outnumbered declining shares by 3:1. Of the 2,920 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,222 stocks advanced, whereas 640 stocks declined. Fifty eight stocks remained unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

BSE information technology (IT) was the only counter to trade lower. The rest of the 12 sectors were high with BSE Realty leading the chart with gain of 2.66%, followed by BSE Oil & Gas that was up 2.03% and BSE Auto that rose 2.00%.

The top three gaining stocks were — Allahabad Bank (up by 6.63%), Marico (up by 6.43%) and Andhra Bank (up by 6.31%).
The top three losing stocks were — Procter & Gamble (down by 4.85%), Bharat Electronics (down by 4.20%) and HPCL (down by 2.02%).

Viewing volumes

Steel maker Ispat Industries was the most actively traded share with over 0.70 crore shares changing hands on the BSE, followed by India’s second largest realty major Unitech (0.39 crore shares), Reliance group’s Reliance Natural Resources (0.35 crore shares), sugar major Shree Renuka Sugars (0.28 crore shares) and wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy (0.22 crore shares).