Monday 4 February, 2008

Strong global cues trigger rally

All-round buying continued for the second straight session, with the Sensex gaining nearly 400 points during the intra-day trades on strong global cues. Riding on the back of firm Asian indices, the Sensex resumed 250 points higher at 18,496 and soon edged past 18,895 in the early trades. While the market remained buoyant above 18,400 levels for the most part, buying accelerated towards the close with gains in heavyweights, realty, technology, information technology (IT), and public sector unit (PSU) stocks lifting the index to an intra-day high of 18,895. The Sensex closed the session with gains of 418 points at 18,660, while the Nifty advanced 157 points at 5,463.

The breadth of the market was positive. Of the 2,844 stocks traded on the BSE, 2,270 stocks advanced, 536 stocks declined and 38 stocks ended unchanged. All the sectoral indices had a decent outing. The BSE Reality index led the pack and soared 6.53% at 10,513 followed by the BSE Teck (up 4.48% at 3,573), the BSE IT index (up 4.15% at 4,097), the BSE PSU index (up 3.36% at 8,658) and the BSE Metal index (up 3.32% at 16,538).

Among the heavyweights, Reliance Communications vaulted 11.96% at Rs685, DLF rose 8.54% at Rs883, Wipro scaled up 6.16% at Rs464, TCS jumped 5.03% at Rs976, NTPC moved up by 4.36% at Rs214.45, SBI advanced 3.93% at Rs2,271, Satyam flared up 3.85% at Rs437.25 and Ranbaxy spurted 3.75% at Rs373. However, HDFC Bank, Maruti, BHEL and Reliance Energy inched marginally lower.

Realty stocks notched up significant gains. Puravankara flared up 13.89% at Rs361.15, Sobha Developers spurted 8.46% at Rs810, Indiabulls Reality scaled up 7.61% at Rs678.60 and HDFC added 6.46% at Rs978. In the tech segment, Rolta surged 23.68% at Rs312.30, Reliance Communications jumped 11.96% at Rs685, Mphasis appreciated by 11.33% at Rs274.70 and Tata Teleservices advanced 9.67% at Rs38.55. TV18, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Adlabs, I-Flex and TCS moved up by over 4-6% each.