Sensex ends on a bullish note

After yesterday’s fall the market saw an upmove during the day on sustained buying in heavyweight, banking and pharma stocks. The Sensex opened with a negative gap of four points but soon gained momentum and moved into positive territory. The Sensex gyrated by over 100 points in early trades and surged to touch the day's high of 13763. However, the market eased towards the close on selling in auto, engineering and metal stocks. The Sensex ended the session with gains of 65 points at 13672 while the Nifty closed at 4012, up 27 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,661 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,337 stocks advanced, 1,234 stocks declined and 90 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE HC Index gained 1.56%, the BSE PSU Index rose 1.40% and the BSE Bankex was up 1.07%.

Most of the Sensex stocks ended at higher levels. NTPC surged 3.12% at Rs162, SBI soared 2.65% at Rs1,035, Wipro gained 2.09% at Rs586, Bharti Airtel added 1.64% at Rs813, ONGC advanced 1.64% at Rs906, Cipla gained 1.39% at Rs233, Hindalco jumped 1.33% at Rs145 and ACC was up 1.25% at Rs817.

Pharma stocks were in demand and attracted strong buying support. Sterling Biotech spurted 16.13% at Rs167, Sun Pharma gained 3.40% at Rs1,151, Glenmark Pharma added 3.23% at Rs665 and Biocon advanced 2.24% at Rs524. Matrix, Wyeth Lab, Divis Lab and Wockhardt gained around 1% each.

Over 1.88 crore Dish TV shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (77.13 lakh shares), Himachal Futuristic (75.45 lakh shares), Tata Steel (47.55 lakh shares) and Hindustan Oil Exploration (47.09 lakh shares).

Value-wise ICRA clocked a turnover of Rs391 crore followed by Tata Steel (Rs241 crore), Dish TV (Rs201 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs80 crore) and Page Industries (Rs79 crore).