Market remains buoyant

The northbound trend of the Sensex continued for the fourth consecutive session with the index registering smart gains on buying in heavyweight and sectoral stocks. The Sensex began the trading session marginally lower and shed 88 points to touch the day's low at 15,478, but recovered on buying in heavyweights and rallied sharply to touch another all-time high of 15,773 towards close. The Sensex came close to testing 15,800 towards the day’s close, but ended the session with a gain of 167 points at 15,732. The Nifty gained 53 points to close at 4,619.

The breadth of the market was marginally positive. Of the 2,703 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,324 stocks advanced, 1,304 stocks declined and 75 stocks ended unchanged. On the sectoral indices front, the BSE CG index surged 4.97% to 13,720 followed by the BSE Realty index (up 2.62% to 8,398) and the BSE FMCG (up 2.12% to 1,868). However, the BSE Bankex index, the BSE HC index and the BSE IT index inched lower.

Among the gainers, BHEL advanced 7.54% to Rs1,772, L&T surged 7.42% to Rs2,659, HUL added 4.58% to Rs203, Bajaj Auto advanced 4.21% to Rs2425, Reliance Energy gained 3.97% to Rs716, ACC jumped 3.47% to Rs1,146 and Satyam Computers was up 2.85% to Rs491. However, Cipla dropped 4.75% to Rs191, Infosys lost 2.01% to Rs1,947 and ICICI Bank declined 1.53% to Rs970, while ITC, Ranbaxy, Ambuja Cement, M&M and Dr Reddy's Lab closed with marginal losses.

Several capital goods stocks attracted strong buying support. Areva soared 7.20% to Rs,1647, BHEL advanced 7.12% to Rs1,765, ABB surged 6.04% to Rs1,136 and L&T gained 5.62% to Rs2,614. Crompton Greaves, Bharat Electronics, Punj Lloyds, BEML, Suzlon Energy and Alstom Projects gained over 1-3% each.

Over 6.10 crore Surya Chakra Power Corporation shares changed hands on the BSE followed by IFCI (1.39 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (98.81 lakh shares), Spice Telecommunication (84.10 lakh shares) and Tata Teleservices (78.56 lakh shares).

Valuewise, GMR Infrastructure registered a turnover of Rs225 crore on the BSE followed by DLF (Rs174 crore), Surya Chakra Power Corporation (Rs139 crore), L&T (Rs98 crore) and United Sprits (Rs98 crore).