Sensex ends buoyant

The Sensex remained firm today on the back of firm Asian markets and strong quarterly results from SBI, LIC Housing Finance, Shobha Developers and Indian Bank. The market opened on a positive note, tracking positive global cues at 13954, up 158 points. The strong optimism among traders kept the Sensex above the 13900 mark. In the mid morning trades the buoyancy among front-line, banking, oil and metal stocks lifted the Sensex to touch the day's high of 14026. The market remained buoyant thereafter, but the 14000 mark continued to elude the Sensex. The Sensex finally ended the session with a gain of 170 points at 13966 while the Nifty closed the session at 4134, up 58 points.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,642 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,641 stocks advanced, 916 stocks declined and 85 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Bankex index jumped 2.45% at 7074 followed by the BSE Oil & Gas index (up 2.31% at 7355), the BSE PSU index (up 2.16% at 6532) and the BSE Metal index (up 1.95% at 10262).

Most of the heavyweights ended at higher levels. Among the blue chips, SBI shot up by 4.92% at Rs1,206, Tata Steel soared 3.86% at Rs591,Gujarat Ambuja Cement surged 3.69% at Rs124, HLL advanced by 3.56% at Rs192, Cipla added 3% at Rs211, ICICI Bank moved up 2.53% at Rs870, ONGC scaled up 2.26% at Rs907 and ACC was up 2.01% at Rs867. Among the laggards, Dr Reddy's Lab dropped 4.71% at Rs651, Hero Honda slipped 2.09% at Rs690 and Bajaj Auto shed 1.86% at Rs2,668 while Wipro, TCS, Tata Motors, HDFC Bank, L&T and ITC closed marginally lower.

Banking stocks were in the limelight and closed with strong gains. Union Bank jumped 5.22% at Rs119, Canara Bank soared 5.12% at Rs230, Oriental Bank surged 4.82% at Rs201, Punjab National Bank added 4.35% at Rs535, Indian Overseas Bank gained 4.31% at Rs119 and Bank of Baroda advanced by 4.31% at Rs270.

Over 2.52 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Nagarjuna Fertilizer (1.47 crore shares), Reliance Petroleum (1.14 crore shares), IDBI (86.39 lakh shares) and Mangalore Chemical & Fertilizers (70.02 lakh shares).

Reliance Industries clocked a turnover of Rs142 crore on the BSE followed by India Bulls Real Estate (Rs138 crore), ICRA (Rs133 crore), Reliance Petroleum (Rs104 crore) and Page Industries (Rs86 crore).