Realty, metal lead Sensex rally

The stock market continued its northward journey for the second consecutive day On Wednesday on the back of short covering ahead of the expiry of the January contract tomorrow. Positive global cues also contributed to the rally.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive Index (Sensex) opened 74 points up from its previous close and moved forward largely on brisk buying in blue-chip Reliance Industries (RIL) and ICICI Bank stocks. The benchmark index touched the intraday high of 9,270.75 as buying continued in sectors like realty, metal and banking. However, the index closed the day at 9257.47, up 3 per cent, or 253.39 points.

RIL, which has the highest weightage in Sensex, was up by 3.8 per cent and ICICI Bank, the largest private sector lender in the country, by 7.08 per cent.

The broader index Nifty-50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed at 2,849.50, registering a gain of 78.15 points.

The market breadth was marginally positive. Out of 2,530 stocks traded, 1,403 advanced and 1,025 declined.

Among the sectoral indices that put up a good show, realty went up by 6.32 per cent, metal 4.44 per cent, bankex 3.79 per cent, oil & gas 3.76 per cent, PSU 3.12 per cent, capital goods 3.04 per cent, consumer durables 2.74 per cent, IT 2.36 per cent, FMCG 2.46 per cent, Teck 1.8 per cent and power by 1.48 per cent.

Among the top gainers, Unitech was up 13.21 per cent to Rs 30.85, Ranbaxy 7.56 per cent to Rs 213.50, ICICI Bank 7.08 per cent to Rs 408.35, DLF 6.63 per cent to Rs 177.70, Larsen & Turbo 5.2 per cent to Rs 671.40, HDFC 4.02 per cent to Rs 1504.60, RIL 3.8 per cent to Rs 1,273.15, Wipro 3.63 per cent to Rs 234.35 and ONGC by 3.42 per cent to Rs 642.25.

Amid the raging controversy, Satyam shares went up by 17.6 per cent to Rs 55.45 after the new board said that there was heavy bidding interest.

Maruti Suzuki was down by 3.15 per cent, Reliance Communication by 3.03 per cent and Sterlite by 0.41 per cent.

FIIs were net sellers of Rs 217.32 crore and DIIs were net buyers of Rs 601.88 crore.

Ved Prakash Chaturvedi, Managing Director of Tata Asset Management, said the market was reacting to day to day news. “Though earnings of some companies have been satisfactory, we are still concerned about other firms, whose earnings are yet to come. There will be ups and downs in the market with downward bias,” he said.