Sensex ends buoyant above 14100

The market reported a solid performance on the back of strong all-round buying even as the major Asian indices exhibited a subdued trend in morning trades. Shrugging off the global cues the market opened with a gap of 21 points at 13950. The market was range-bound, but stayed above the 14000 mark in the mid morning trades. As trading progressed, the index lost ground by the afternoon and touched the day's low of 13937, up eight points from yesterday's close. The eruption of buying towards the close in heavyweights, banking and public sector stocks lifted the Sensex to touch the intra-day high of 14159 and closed the session at 14127, up 198 points. The Nifty ended the session at 4171, up 51 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,679 stocks that traded on the BSE, 1,626 stocks advanced, 987 stocks declined and 66 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Bankex notched up gains of 3.09% at 7413 followed by the BSE PSU index (up 1.55% at 6653), the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 1.52% at 7402) and the BSE CG index (up 1.50% at 10083).

The heavyweights witnessed strong buying interest. In the banking space, SBI soared 4.71% at Rs1,284, ICICI Bank rose 3.61% at Rs919 and HDFC Bank was up 2.02% at Rs1,031. Among the other major gainers Reliance Communication shot up by 3.25% at Rs491, BHEL jumped 3.02% at Rs2,595, Tata Motors added 2.84% at Rs735, Hindalco gained 2.51% at Rs149, Reliance Industries moved up by 2.29% at Rs1,634 and L&T was up 2.29% at Rs1,712. However, Hero Honda slipped 2.79% at Rs678, Infosys lost 1.06% at Rs1,952 and TCS was down 0.99% at Rs1,224.

Banking stocks notched up significant gains during the day. Oriental Bank surged 6.32% at Rs220, Andhra Bank scaled up 3.67% at Rs92, Union Bank rose 2.86% at Rs122, Canara Bank jumped 2.59% at Rs243, Kotak Bank added 2.54% at Rs552, Fedral Bank gained 1.89% at Rs269 and Punjab National Bank was up 1.80% at Rs557.

Over 2.43 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Nagajuna Fertilizers (1.05 crore shares), Tata Teliservices (95.78 lakh shares), IFCI (65.67 lakh shares) and Petronet LNG (65.64 lakh shares).

Value-wise Unitech registered a turnover of Rs225 crore on the BSE followed by HDFC Bank (Rs167 crore), SBI (Rs153 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs125 crore) and Orbit Corporation (Rs104 crore).