Markets have a spectacular day

The markets galloped ahead on the back of short-covering rally and buying interest in index heavyweights. Reliance Industries had a blazing day, after a prolonged period of indeciveness, and the other heavyweights merrily joined the party.

The market opening, sober as it was, did not give anything away. The benchmark indices were flat, in line with global trends. But in the afternoon sesson, the markets seemingly decided to say good-bye to their demons of indecisiveness and move ahead. And it did so in style, with the Sensex closing stronger by 218 points at 17383 and the Nifty ending up 69 points at 5198.   The mid-cap and small-cap indices also move dup more than 1% each.

Reliance Industries was the top gainer on the Sensex. The index bellweather jumped 3.8% to Rs 1066 after reportedly being out of the race for the Canadian firm Value Creation, for which it had placed a $2 billion bid. News reports suggesting an advance tax payment of Rs 770 crore for Q4 March 2010 compared with Rs 365 crore in Q4 March 2009, further aided the positive sentiment surrounding 
India's largest private sector company by market capitalisation.

Tata Steel strengthened by 2.8% to Rs 627 and L&T appreciated by 2.8% at Rs 1597. M&M, Sun Pharma and Hindalco were the other significant gainers.

On the loser's side, Bharti Airtel weakened by 10.6% at Rs 294, ACC shed 1.2% at Rs 969 and HDFC Bank lost 0.3% at Rs 1804.

The market breadth was strong. Out of 2920 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1818 advancing stocks as against 1026 declines.

Reliance Industries topped the value charts on the BSE with a total turnover of Rs 159.03 crore. This was followed by Tata Steel (Rs 83.01 crore), SBI (Rs 55.88 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 54.55 crore) and DLF (Rs 52.31 crore).

DLF led the volume charts with trades of 1.69 million. It was followed by Reliance Industries (1.51 million), Jaiprakash Associates (1.47 million), Tata Steel (1.34 million) and Hindalco (1.10 million).