Sensex closes marginally above 14,900

Domestic indices rose today taking cues from the Monday's bounce back in US markets. The US indices rose on speculation that the Federal Reserve will offer some comfort to jittery investors at its policy meeting on Tuesday in light of the recent woes in the subprime, credit and housing markets. The Sensex opened higher at 15,038 tracking positive Asian indices, which mirrored the gains in US markets. The market rallied sharply thereafter to touch the day's high at 15,142 on sustained buying in energy, cement and pharma stocks. However, weakness in Asian markets in the afternoon dampened the sentiment, triggering the selling in the Sensex heavyweights and the index touched the day's low of 14,902 towards the close. The Sensex finally settled at 14,933, up 30 points. The NSE-50 index of the National Stock Exchange gained 17 points, or 0.39%, to 4,356.

The broader market, however, continued to remain in the green. Of the 2,704 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,696 stocks advanced, 950 declined and 58 ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in the green. The BSE Bankex was the biggest gainer and moved up by 1.10% at 7,805 followed by the BSE HC index (up 0.79% at 3,627) and the BSE Teck index (up 0.65% at 3,636). However, the BSE FMCG index fell sharply and dropped 1.38% at 1,937 followed by the BSE Metal index (down 0.88% at 11,042) and the BSE Bankex index (down 0.42% at 7,929).

Among the laggards ITC was down 3.10% at Rs167, ICICI Bank declined by 1.90% at Rs871, Bajaj Auto shed 1.39% at Rs2,275, Tata Steel dropped 1.13% at Rs643, while BHEL, Hindalco, ONGC, Ranbaxy, M&M and Maruti closed with marginal losses. However, select heavyweights attracted decent buying support. Reliance Energy surged 2.98% at Rs765, NTPC rose 1.93% at Rs167, Bharti Airtel jumped 1.72% at Rs876, HDFC added 1.59% at Rs1,974, Cipla moved up by 1.49% at Rs187 and Dr Reddy's Lab gained 1.44% at Rs635.

Select FMCG stocks witnessed considerable selling pressure. Colgate dropped 1.87% at Rs401, United Breweries lost 1.34% at Rs319, while, Britania, Dabur India, Tata Tea and Hindustan Unilever ended with moderate losses.

Over 2.30 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (2.26 crore shares), Dolat Investments (1.19 crore shares), Suryachakra Power Corporation (1.16 crore shares) and IKF Technologies (81.15 lakh shares).

Everonn Systems topped the value list with a turnover of Rs311 crore on the BSE followed by IFCI (Rs153 crore), Housing Development and Infrastructure (Rs130 crore), SBI (Rs128 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs115 crore).