Financial year starts on a happy note

Indian markets today started the financial year on a strong note at 17,555 tracking firm Asian cues. Renewed buying interest in IT stocks coupled with strength in metal and realty counters ensured a bullish day.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries too moved up in the second half of the day, which helped the Sensex touch a high of 17,706. The Sensex finally ended at 17,692, up 165 points. The NSE Nifty shut shop at 5,290, up 41 points.

The market breadth was positive, out of 2,884 shares traded, 2,194 advanced and 620 declined on the BSE.

The Midcap and the smallcap indices were up 1% and 2%, respectively.

Shree Ram Mills and Visal Information were the major gainers on the smallcap index.

INDEX GAINERS

TCS and Tata Steel gained over 3% each at Rs 807 and Rs 652, respectively.

Jaiparakash Associates, Tata Motors, HDFC and Infosys advanced 2.5% each.

The other major gainers were Wipro, Reliance Industries,Reliance Infrastructure and BHEL, added 1.5% each.

...AND THE LOSERS

Hindustan Unilever and Bharti Airtel slipped 3% each to Rs 230 and Rs 302, respectively.

Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Power were down 1% each.

Among the sectoral indices, IT index has added 2% to 5,355.

TCS and Mphasis were the major gainers on the IT index, up 3% each at Rs 808 and Rs 640, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Mundra Port topped the value chart on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 489.78 crore. It was followed by Arss Infra Project (Rs 241.71 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 99.05 crore), Maytas Infrastructure (Rs 77.98 crore) and Bharti Airtel (Rs 68.99 crore).

FCS Software led the volumes chart on the BSE with trades of 66.64 million shares. It was followed by Mundra Port (6.55 million), Shree Ashtavinayak (6.40 million), Ispat Industries (6.26 million) and HFCL Infotel (5.71 million)