Market Commentary

Sensex touches life-time high of 9714

Impressive gains in L&T, ICICI Bank and HDFC among others saw the index close at a new high at 9686.
Appreciating further over its last close, the market today was in a belligerent mood through the trading session and in the process crossed
the 9700 mark for the first time during intra-day trades. After resuming 30 points higher at 9580, the index immediately edged past the 9600 mark and kept surging ahead as the trading progressed. While the market was in the midst of a strong bull run, the index scaled past the 9700 mark in noon trades on firm buying in blue-chip stocks and touched a new intra-day high of 9714. A late bout of profit-taking in select counters saw the Sensex shed some gains and still end at a new closing high of 9686, up 1.42% or 136 points. The Nifty, too, ended on an upbeat note with gains of 32 points at 2940.

Surprisingly, the broader market was negative. Of the 2,589 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,536 stocks declined, 988 stocks advanced and 65 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices ended on a higher note. Among the major gainers, the BSE CG index moved up by 2.83%, the BSE FMCG index added 2% and the BSE HC index was up nearly 1%.

Driving the rally L&T soared 4.95% at Rs2,038, ICICI Bank advanced 4.52% at Rs597, HDFC moved up 3.99% at Rs1,281 and ONGC rose 2.33% at Rs1,276. Among other gainers HLL shot up by 3.45% at Rs195, Hero Honda added 2.61% at Rs859, Dr Reddy's gained 3.80% at Rs1,083, Tata Motors jumped by 1.82% at Rs676 and Wipro was up 2.20% at Rs504. On the other hand select counters ended weak on profit-taking. SBI dropped 1.78% at Rs885, Grasim was down nearly 1% at Rs1,416 on disappointing Q3 numbers and NTPC ended lower at Rs113.

Capital goods stocks were in the limelight. Alfa Laval zoomed 10.18% at Rs1,175, Jyoti Structures flared up 9.63% at Rs385, Bharat Electronics advanced 7.32% at Rs1,193 and Esab India gained 6.16% at Rs464. KEC International, Batliboi, Asian Electronics, Honeywell Automation and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure were up 5% each.

ABB at Rs2,595, Bannari Amman Sugars at Rs1,400, Bharat Electronics at Rs1,204, BHEL at Rs1,685, Esab India at Rs489, Goodlass Nerolac at Rs885, GHCL at Rs135 and Himadri Chemicals & Industries at Rs181 touched new intra-day highs on the BSE.

Amar Raja Batteries at Rs217.10, Asian Electronics at Rs414.90, Honeywell Automation at Rs1,348.95, Shrenuj & Company at Rs37.80 and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure at Rs474.95 were frozen at the upper limit of the circuit breaker on the BSE.

Over 59.92 lakh LML shares changed hands on the BSE followed by PBA Infrastructure (41.68 lakh shares), Triveni Engineering & Industries (39.39 lakh shares), Reliance Industries (38.34 lakh shares) and Radha Madhav Corporation (30.20 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries registered a turnover of Rs265 crore followed by ICICI Bank (Rs159 crore), SBI (Rs148 crore), Bajaj Hindusthan (Rs92 crore) and PBA Infrastructure (Rs73 crore).