Sensex on steroids…soars past 17k on EU aid

Indian stocks were on fire on Monday, with the benchmark indices registering one of their biggest single day gains since last year’s post-election rally. The BSE Sensex, which had slipped below 17,000 due to the euro-zone debt crisis, bounced back after the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a massive rescue mechanism to make nearly US$1 trillion in loans available to EU member countries in danger of going bankrupt.

"Also, short covering in index heavyweights like Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Hindalco and others saw the NSE Nifty surge past 5200 level in late trade," says Amar Ambani, Vice President Research IIFL.

In fact, Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank together lifted the Sensex by ~200 points. Finally, the Sensex rallied 561 points to end at 17,331 and NSE Nifty rose 175 points to close at 5,194. Among the 30 components of Sensex, 21 ended in the negative terrain and 9 ended in the green.

Last week was the worst for the Indian equity markets since October 2009 as FIIs turned net sellers as risk appetite stumbled amid mounting worries that the Greek fiscal crisis may spread to other debt-heavy EU members also.

Markets in Asia ended in the positive terrain; the Nikkei in Japan gained 1.6%, Australia's S&P/ASX was up 2.6%, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was up 2.5% and Shanghai SE Composite was marginally up 0.3%.

On the other hand, European indices were trading with positive bias as well, the DAX in Germany was up 4.4%, the CAC 40 index in France was up 8% and the FTSE in the UK surged 5%.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, the BSE Realty index was top gainer; the index gained 6.5%, followed by BSE Metal index up 6.5% and BSE Banking index was up 4.1%. Even the Mid-Cap index advanced 2.5% and the Small-cap index added 3%.

Outside the frontline indices, the big gainers in the broader market were Torrent Power, Mundra Port, Tulip Telecom and Bhushan Steel. On the other hand, loses included Shriram Transport, Chambal Fert, Godrej Cons and P&G.

Talwalkars Better Value Fitness, one of the largest and oldest fitness chains in India started off with healthy gains and gained momentum as the day progressed. The stock finally ended at Rs162.6 translating into a premium of 27% as compared to its issue price.

Talwalkars had priced its IPO between Rs123-128 per share price band. The issue was subscribed 28.39 times. FIIs put in bids for 5.46 crore shares as compared to 3.025mn shares reserved for the QIB category as a whole. DIIs, other than MF, put in bids for 9.24mn shares.

The non-institutional investors' (NII) portion was bid 51.47 times. The retail investors' portion was bid 8.4 times.

Shares of Cipla slipped sharply by 6% to end at Rs319 after the company announced that they were planning to acquire two manufacturing facilities for Rs820.2mn. The scrip opened at Rs345 it touched an intra-day high of Rs345 and a low of Rs317 and recorded volumes of over 0.7mn shares on BSE.

Shares of LIC Housing Finance rose over 5% to end at Rs956 after the CEO R.R. Nair, reported that the mortgage lender is planning to enter the banking business. In addition there were reports that the company is planning to raise Rs200bn. The scrip opened at Rs924 it touched an intra-day high of Rs960 and a low of Rs924 and recorded volumes of over 0.2mn shares on BSE.

Shares of Pratibha Industries shot up over 4.5% to end at Rs389 after the company secured a BOT Project worth Rs1bn for 'Construction of Bridges in Baramati City including maintenance of roads' from Maharashtra Stale Road Development Corporation Ltd.

The project involves '(i) construction of 2 bridges (ii) maintenance of the bridges and total road length of about 34 km within Baramati City (iii) commercial development of 8.4 hectors of land and (iv) collection of toll at 5 entry points of Baramati City for a period of 19 years and 4 months". The coat of the project is to be recovered through toll collection and land development.

Shares of Dish TV advanced by over 8% to end at Rs38.3 after it narrowed its Q4 quarter loss by 24% to Rs597.7mn from a year earlier. The scrip opened at Rs36.8 it touched an intra-day high of Rs38.5 and a low of Rs36 and recorded volumes of over 1.8mn shares on BSE.