Roller coaster ride

Today, the market witnessed a pre-result rally fueled by global money. After registering the all-time high of 17,953 in early trades, the Sensex slipped over 665 points to touch the intra-day low of 17,288 on the back of a frenzied selling pressure. But, by the afternoon the market went into a major recovery mode and surged by 559 points during intra-day trades. While the mood remained upbeat on strong buying in technology, oil, realty and capital goods stocks, the rally gathered more steam towards the closing hours and the Sensex ended the session with a gain of 2.99% or 518 points at 17,847, and the Nifty rose by 2.80% or 142 points to close at 5,211.

However, the market breadth was negative. Of the 2,849 stocks traded on the BSE 1,695 stocks declined, 1,111 stocks advanced and 43 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices the BSE Realty index flared up by 6.46% and the BSE IT index gained 4.02%. While the other sectoral indices were up around 1-3% each, the BSE CD index and the BSE HC index ended in negative territory.

Recovery in the market was led by Reliance Energy, which shot up by 7.48% at Rs1,450. Among the major gainers, Infosys advanced by 5.72% at Rs2,001, NTPC moved up by 5.34% at Rs217, Reliance Communication added 5.03% at Rs643. Reliance Industries scaled up by 4.55% at Rs2,394 and BHEL jumped 4.23% at Rs2,074. Select index stocks witnessed selling pressure. Cipla was the major loser and dropped by 1.93% at Rs185, Ambuja Cement fell by 1.63% at Rs145. HLL, Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Tata Steel also ended in the red.

Over 3.65 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (3.07 crore shares), Tata Teleservices (2.51 crore shares), IKF Technologies (2.43 crore shares) and Centurion Bank of Punjab (2.27 crore shares).

Reliance Energy was the most actively traded counter on the BSE. Reliance Energy registered a turnover of Rs736 crore followed by DLF (Rs617 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs567 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs443 crore) and Reliance Natural Resources (Rs348 crore).