Sensex closes 141 points up, bank stocks zoom (Roundup)

In a volatile session, a benchmark index of Indian equities markets, the 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex), ended Saturday's trade up 141 points or 0.48 percent.

The choppy session was caused due to the day's biggest trigger - the Union Budget 2015-16 - which was presented in the Lok Sabha by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The finance minister said India's real GDP growth is estimated at 7.5 percent making India the fastest-growing large economy of the world. He also said a double-digit growth was now feasible.

Jaitley did not change the income tax rates or increase the exemption limits for individuals. He said the government was proposing to rationalise various tax exemptions and incentives to reduce tax disputes and improve tax administration.

The proposals mentioned by the finance minister made clear the government's focus on enlarging the tax-exempt investments/spend.

The markets trade pendulumed during the budget presentation. It traded flat just after the presentation ended and subsequently plunged around 200 points at 2.00 p.m.

Soon after, the market pared its losses and gained more than 200 points around 3.30 p.m. the provisional closing time.

The Sensex of the S&P Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 29,411.33 points, closed the day's trade at 29,361.50 points, up 141.38 points or 0.48 percent from the previous day's close at 29,220.12 points.

The Sensex touched a high of 29,560.32 points by gaining 340.2 points and a low of 28,882.02 points losing 338.1 points in the intra-day trade.

Analysts said that markets were highly volatile during the course of day's trade. The markets had remained open for normal trading Saturday on the back of union budget.

"We have seen high volatility today and as market understands the details, we believe this will bring fair momentum in the market," said Vinod Nair, head - fundamental research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

"In the short term, we can see consolidation till the impact from realty and infra is clearly understood since expectation was very high. Important acts like labor and land has to be handled later."

The mid-cap and small- cap indices ended lower, they closed 0.01 percent and 0.47 percent down respectively.

The wider 50-scrip Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) also made gains during the day's trade. It ended 57.25 points or 0.65 percent up at 8,901.85 points.

Healthy buying took place in bank, healthcare, automobile, information technology (IT) and oil and gas sectors.

However, heavy selling pressure was observed in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), consumer durables, capital goods, power, realty and metal indices of the BSE.

The S&P BSE bank index rocketed by 714.51 points, healthcare index zoomed 315.10 points, automobile index augmented by 213.03 points, IT index gained 90.45 points and oil and gas index was higher by 83.76 points.

The S&P BSE FMCG index plunged 350.59 points, followed by consumer durables index which was lower by 217.32 points, capital goods index lost 45.62 points, power index fell 26.38 points, metal index was down 22.88 points and realty index slipped 16.61 points.

The major Sensex gainers were: Axis Bank, up 8.15 percent at Rs.613.40, Sun Pharma, up 3.62 percent at Rs.911, Tata Motors, up 3.15 percent at Rs.593.65, ICICI Bank, up 3.15 percent at Rs.345.55 and DrReddy's Lab, up 2.82 percent at Rs.3,367.

The losers were: ITC, down 8.27 percent at Rs.361.25; BHEL, down 3.21 percent at Rs.262.15; NTPC, down 1.64 percent at Rs.155.75, Hindalco, down 1.39 percent at Rs.153.05 and HDFC, down 0.81 percent at Rs.1,336.15.

The next major trigger for the markets will be the data by HSBC manufacturing PMI and current account on Monday.