Volatile market ends buoyant

The market wiped out losses of over 150 points incurred in the first half, after a strong bout of buying in Tisco, Mahindra & Mahindra and Reliance Industries triggered wide-spread buying in the market. It was a highly volatile trading session, with the Sensex opening 164 points lower at 17066 following weakness in Asian indices and crashing to the day's low of 17042 on relentless selling. The market was on a recovery path thereafter--the Sensex witnessed a sharp turnaround in the afternoon as gains in heavyweights, oil & gas, metal and public sector stocks propelled the index to an intra-day high of 17293. After gyrating 250 points during intra-day trades, the Sensex closed up 13 points at 17243. The Nifty also ended 13 points higher at 5118.

The market breadth ended in positive. Of the 2,795 stocks traded on the BSE 1,710 stocks advanced, 1,009 stocks declined and 76 stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Oil & Gas index led the pack and gained 2.36% at 11,433 followed by the BSE Metal index (up 1.24% at 17,390) and the BSE PSU index (up 0.98% at 7,727). The CG index, auto index and realty index ended with steady gains. The rest of the sectoral indices ended in negative territory.

Tata Steel was the star performer amongst the heavyweights and the stock soared 3.09% at Rs922.25. Among the other major gainers, Mahindra & Mahindra advanced 2.66% at Rs670, Reliance Industries jumped 2.53% at Rs2,667.90, BHEL rose 2.03% at Rs1,771.70, Grasim moved up by 1.57% at Rs2,323.10, Tata Motors advanced 1.55% at Rs688.85 and TCS added 1.18% at Rs963.95. However, HDFC Bank, HDFC and HUL inched lower.

Oil stocks were in demand and scaled higher. RNRL soared 5.04% at Rs113.60, Aban Offshore flared up 4.95% at Rs4,050, Essar Oil added 4.75% at Rs261.20, RPL gained 3.99% at Rs192.90 and BPCL was up 1.99% at Rs356.05. In the metal pack, Gujarat NRE zoomed 6.28% at Rs159, NATCO shot up by 4.62% at Rs538, Hindustan Zinc rose 3.07% at Rs752 and Ispat gained 2.40% at Rs34.10.

Over 2.15 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by RNRL (1.49 crore shares), Ispat (1.40 crore shares), Aishwarya (1.39 crore shares), Chambal Fertilizers (1.24 crore shares) and RPL (1.04 crore shares)