Markets rebound on short-covering

Dancing to the weak US and Asian market cues, the Indian markets opened weak. The Sensex opened 85 points down at 16,634. It slipped further thereafter to touch the intraday low of 16,494 within the first hour of trade. From thereon, it was a rather lacklustre day. The indices traded in no man's land, bereft of direction, till late noon. The markets bounced back in the last one hour as the impending derivatives expiry would have compelled the players to cover their short positions.

The Sensex ended at 16,781, up 62 points. And, heartingly, the Nifty ended just shy of the 5,000 mark at 4,987, up 17 points.

The market breadth turned positive as well. Out of 2,838 stocks traded, there were 1,473 advancing and 1,286 declining stocks.

INDEX MOVERS...

HDFC zoomed 3.4% to Rs 2,743, HDFC Bank surged 3.4% to Rs 1,622 and Wipro gained 2.2% to Rs 579. Reliance Communications, NTPC, ICICI Bank and SBI were the other major gainers.

...AND SHAKERS

Hindalco sunk 4% to Rs 129, Infosys dropped 3.4% to Rs 2285 and Hero Honda declined 1.69% to Rs 1,653. ACC, Sterlite, Tata Motors and Tata Steel also figured in the loser's list.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Infosys topped the combined value chart with a turnover of Rs 1,335 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 1,145 crore), SBI (Rs 651 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 624 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs 623 crore).

Wire & Wireless led the combined volume chart on the BSE and the NSE with trades of around 60.48 million shares. It was followed by Suzlon (54.88 million), Unitech (52.14 million), IFCI (44.35 million) and Ispat Industries (40.02 million).