Sensex makes marginal gains, auto stocks surge

A benchmark index of Indian equities markets closed Tuesday's trade in positive territory, a day after it lost 363 points on sustained selling by foreign investors.

The 30-scrip S&P Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 19,820.03 points, closed at 19,920.21 points, up 19.25 points or 0.10 percent from its previous day's close at 19,900.96 points.

The benchmark Sensex surged to a high of 20,050.42 points and a low of 19,782.78 points in the day's trade.

The wider 50-scrip S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) marginally gained by 2.70 points or 0.05 percent at 5,892.45 points.

The RBI move last week to hike key lending rates will make home, auto and other loans costlier and worsen the industrial and overall growth situation which is already sluggish.

Sector-wise in Tuesday's trade, stocks made gains in automobile, capital goods, healthcare, consumer durables and power sectors.

However, metal, information technology, bank, oil and gas and public sector undertakings (PSU) scrips sustained heavy losses.

Healthy buying took place in automobile stocks. The automobile index increased by 116.65 points, followed by capital goods index which was up 81.67 points; healthcare index, up 20.34 points; consumer durables index was up 13.48 points; and power index closed the day's trade up 11.85 points.

The S&P BSE metal index lost 86.61 points, IT index was down 36.41 points, followed by bank index, down 32.65 points; oil and gas index was lower by 32.40 points; and PSU index was down 29.40 points.

The prominent Sensex gainers were: Bajaj Auto, up 2.73 percent at Rs.2,032.70; Tata Power, up 2.15 percent at Rs.80.85; Larsen and Toubro (L&T), up 1.82 percent at Rs.826.20; NTPC, up 1.72 percent at Rs.145.25 and HDFC, up 1.66 percent at Rs.787.85.

The losers were: Hindalco Inds, down 3.65 percent at Rs.112.10; Coal India, down 2.56 percent at Rs.296.95; Jindal Steel, down 1.98 percent at Rs.247.65; Bharti Airtel, down 1.51 percent at Rs.330; and Wipro, down 1.14 percent at Rs.478.10.

Among the Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei closed 0.07 percent down and Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost by 0.82 percent, while China's Shanghai Composite Index was lower by 0.61 percent.

In Europe, London's FTSE 100 was trading 0.19 percent up and Germany's DAX Index was higher by 0.25 percent while the French CAC 40 Index was up by 0.63 percent.