Sensex snaps 8-day losing streak led by oil shares

ONGC, Reliance Inds among top Sensex gainers

The Sensex ended its 8-day losing streak on Tuesday, shrugging off weak December IIP numbers, helped by gains in oil shares.

The 30-share Sensex ended up 100 points at 19,561 and the 50-share Nifty ended up 25 points at 5,922.      .

Indicating persistent sluggishness in the economy, industrial output contracted to a three-month low of 0.6% in December due to poor performance of manufacturing and mining sectors and decline in production of capital as well as consumer goods.

Industrial production growth stood at 0.7% during the April-December period of this fiscal, down from 3.7% in the same period of 2011-12, according to official data released here today.

Meanwhile, the decline in industrial output for November 2012 has been revised downwards to 0.84% from a contraction of 0.1% in the month as per the provisional estimates released last month.

In Asia, the yen recovered from lows against the dollar and Tokyo stocks jumped closer to a 33-month high on Tuesday after markets took comments from a US official as approval for Japan to pursue anti-deflation policies that weaken the yen. The Nikkei ended up 1.9% at 11,369.

European shares were trading flat with a mixed bias on the back of discouraging earnings outlook by select corporates. The FTSE-100 and CAC were marginally up while CAC-40 was down.

The sectoral indices on the BSE were led by Oil & Gas index up 1.5% followed by Healthcare, Bankex and Auto indices.

ONGC was the top Sensex gainer up 3.8% at Rs 320 after reporting a better-than-expected net profit at Rs 5,563 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2012 (Q3) due to lower than expected subsidy sharing. Analyst on an average expected profit of Rs 5,243 crore from the state-run oil exploration and production company.

Reliance Ind was up 1% at Rs 876 after the company said it will shut down one of its crude distillation unit at its 5,80,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) export-oriented refinery at Jamnagar Complex for four weeks beginning February 18, 2013. The company, in a press statement said, this opportunity would also be utilized to carry out necessary modifications to improve the reliability and performance of the unit.

In the financial space HDFC Bank, HDFC, ICICI Bank, and SBI were up 0.1 - 1% each.

Among other shares, DB Realty and Unitech recovered marginally from their day lows but ended down nearly 18% lower on reports that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) suspects its own prosecutor of aiding Unitech, managing director Sanjay Chandra, one of the accused in the 2G case.   “The CBI has registered a Preliminary Enquiry report, which names the lead 2G prosecutor AK Singh. The CBI Preliminary Enquiry Report also names Unitech MD Sanjay Chandra,” the CNN-IBN report suggests.

Strides Arcolab ended up 7.5% at Rs 1,038 in noon deals, extending its previous two day’s gain on NSE after the pharmaceutical company clarified the delayed or cancelled in the company's injectables unit sale is purely speculative in nature.

Dishman Pharmaceuticals and Chemicals ended down  4% at Rs 90.20 after reporting 62% year-on-year drop in its standalone net profit at Rs 5.75 crore for the third quarter ended December 2012 due to higher finance cost.

Elantas Beck India has dipped nearly 13% to end at Rs 648 after the promoter fixed floor price for the sale shares at Rs 650 per share, a much below than Monday's closing price of Rs 741.85.

In the broader markets, the BSE Mid-cap ended down 0.3% at 6,723 and the Small-cap index ended down 0.5% at 6,739.

The market breadth ended negative with 1,270 stocks declining and 848 gainers on the BSE.