The markets rallied for the third straight day, with the Sensex gaining 142 points, after a near 300-points rally yesterday.
The indices had a gap-up opening on the back of the overnight rally on Wall Street and the firmness across Asia and there was no looking back. The barometer Sensex extended its previous day's tally further by another 142 points or 0.8% at 17064 and the Nifty added 40 points to end at 5119. The midcap index added 19 points or 0.2% at 6884 and the smallcap index was up 37 points 0.4% at 8637.
Wall Street had rallied more than 2% on better-than-expected economic data from China and Australia and in-line to slightly better than expected weekly jobs data in the US.
Meanwhile, the industrial output rose much faster than expected at 17.4% in April 2010 from a year earlier. Manufacturing, which constitutes around 80 per cent of the index of industrial production (IIP), grew 19.4% in April against 0.4% a year ago. Within manufacturing, capital goods production rose by 72.8% in April against a contraction of 5.9% a year ago. The other two sectors--mining and electricity--expanded by 11.4% and 6% in April against 3.4% and 6.7% respectively in the same period last year.
RIL spurted 3% to Rs 1046 to emerge as the top gainer on the BSE. The index heavyweight is reportedly in talks to buy a stake in shale gas assets owned by Pioneer Natural Resources in the United States. RIL may join Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil in buying the assets. Pioneer has about 310,000 acres of shale gas acreage in the Eagle Ford region in South Texas. Among the other substantial gainers, BHEL added 2.6% at Rs 2392 and M&M continued its good recent run by ending 2.1% higher at Rs 604.
And banking stocks were in the limelight post the IIP announcement; ICICI Bank ended at Rs 845, higher by 1.9%, HDFC Bank ended at Rs 1943, higher by 1.5% and SBI ended at Rs 2338, up 0.4%.
However, telecom stocks saw profit-booking after the stellar gains of the recent past. Bharti Airtel, which had added more than 8% in the past two days alone, weakened by 3.7% to Rs 274 and RCom lost 0.8% at Rs 172. Among the other notable losers, Sterlite shed 1% at Rs 635 and ACC lost 0.9% at Rs 861.
The market breadth was positive. Out of 2966 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1533 advancing stocks as against 1304 declines.
RIL topped the value charts on the BSE with a total turnover of Rs 167.85 crore. This was followed by Tata Steel (Rs 93.09 crore), Hindalco (Rs 88.49 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 88.39 crore) and SBI (Rs 82.36 crore).