Sensex ends buoyant on firm overseas markets

The market held firm above the 14300 level for almost the entire trading session as strong US and Asian markets created a perfect platform for the bulls to pursue buying. After registering yesterday the biggest single-session gain (of 198 points) in the last two weeks, the Sensex resumed with a huge positive gap of 90 points at 14217. The Sensex gained further ground on sustained buying in banking, oil & gas and information technology stocks. However, buoyancy towards the close lifted the Sensex to touch the intra-day high of 14353. The Sensex finally closed with gains of 1.22% and was up 172 points at 14300. The Nifty rose 1.17% and gained 49 points to close at 4220.

Surprisingly, the breadth of the market was negative, with the losers outpacing the gainers in the ratio of 1.05:1. Of the 2,685 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,337 stocks declined, 1,272 stocks advanced and 76 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Oil & Gas index moved up by 2.41% followed by the BSE Bankex index (up 1.69%), the BSE PSU index (up 1.42%), the BSE IT index (up 1.39%), the BSE Teck index (up 1.16%) and the BSE FMCG index (up 1.09%). However, the BSE Auto index closed in negative territory and shed 0.82%.

Among the index heavyweights, SBI surged 3.40% at Rs1,328, Reliance Industries spurted 3.09% at Rs1,685, Dr Reddy's Lab scaled up 2.19% at Rs678, Tata Motors soared 2.16% at Rs751, TCS advanced 1.95% at Rs1,248, ACC moved up by 1.91% at Rs889 and Reliance Communication added 1.84% at Rs500. However, Bajaj Auto tumbled 6.71% at Rs2,500, HLL slipped 1.14% at Rs195 and Grasim closed with marginal losses at Rs208.

Over 4.10 crore Bhagwati Banquets & Hotels shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (2.35 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (1.56 crore shares), Nagarjuna Fertilizers (77.93 lakh shares) and Tata Teliservices (70.52 lakh shares).

Unitech was the most actively traded counter on the BSE and registered a turnover of Rs246 crore followed by Bhagwati Banquets & Hotels (Rs205 crore), Bajaj Auto (Rs178 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs164 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs131 crore).