Sensex stages smart recovery, rises 92 points

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive Index, or Sensex, on Tuesday made a spectacular recovery towards the end of the day on the back of buying in FMCG, metal and select banking stocks as well as short-covering in some real estate stocks.

The index opened in the positive zone following news of the US services sector expanding in September for the first time since the start of the global economic slump and positive openings in Asian markets.

But the euphoria was short-lived. The index touched a low of 16,622.05 in the afternoon amid tumbling of telecom shares due to fears that reducing tariffs would hit the bottom lines of these companies.

The Sensex closed at 16,958.5, up 92.13 points, or 0.55 per cent. The CNX Nifty settled the day at 5,027.40, up 24.20, or 0.48 per cent.

The market breadth was negative. Out of 2,803 shares traded, 1,685 declined (60.11 per cent), 1,039 advanced (37.07 per cent) and 79 (2.82 per cent) were unchanged on the BSE.

Among sectoral indices, the FMCG index rose 2.89 per cent while the metals index was up 1.71 per cent. TECk continued to fall for the second day and dropped 3.71 per cent while the realty index was down 1.91 per cent.

The prominent BSE-30 gainers were Hindalco (6.05 per cent) and Hindustan Unilever (5.55 per cent). Reliance Infrastructure, ITC, BHEL, Sterlite, ICICI Bank and Tata Steel advanced 2-5 per cent.

Among the major losers were ACC (2 per cent), Wipro (1.61 per cent), Sun Pharmaceuticals (1.52 per cent) and DLF (1.38 per cent).

The Asian markets closed on a positive note. The Hang Seng surged 1.87 per cent and the Shanghai Composite advanced 0.90 per cent. The Nikkei settled on a flat note.