The markets have begun the week on a sound footing, leaving behind an eventless session on Friday and the choppiness that underlined the trading activity through last week. The Sensex ended at 19,151, higher by 143 points and the Nifty shut shop at 5743, up 46 points. On the broader market front, the midcap index ended at 7251, higher by 59 points and the smallcap index ended at 9016, up 69 points. The banking space hogged the limelight on the back of SBI's stellar Q3 performance and ahead of RBI's quarterly monetary policy meet scheduled on Tuesday.
On the global front, Asian stocks had a mixed session on mild bargain buying after a sell-off last week. The key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, and Taiwan ended down by upto a percent each, while the South Korea, Singaporean and Japanese markets ended with gains of around a half a percent each. And the European markets were marginally negative in mid-day trading ahead of the US Fed Reserve meeting on Tuesday. Wall Street had closed mixed on Friday; the Dow had gained 49 points, while the Nasdaq dropped 14 points.
SBI zoomed by 3.6% at Rs 3693 to top the gainer's list on the BSE on reporting better-than-estimated revenue growth for the third quarter ended December 31, 2010. The country’s largest public sector bank posted a 14% jump in net profit of Rs 2,826 crore in Q3FY11 compared with Rs 2,479 crore in the corresponding period last year on the back of higher growth in core income.
In the broader financials space, ICICI Bank rose 1.6% to Rs 1083 after net profit jumped 30.51% to Rs 1437.02 crore on a 8.78% rise in total income to Rs 8444.75 crore in Q3 December 2010 over Q3 December 2009. HDFC jumped by 2.5% at Rs 669, HDFC hardened by 2.3% at Rs 2148 and Axis Bank gained 2.9% at Rs 1322. Indian Bank surged 6% at Rs 234 after net profit rose 11.31% to Rs 491.29 crore on 14.4% increase in total income to Rs 2640.59 crore in Q3 December 2010 over Q3 December 2009. And Union Bank of India gained 3.3% at Rs 337 after net profit rose 8.43% to Rs 579 crore on 24.88% increase in total income to Rs 4693 crore in Q3 December 2010 over Q3 December 2009.
The interest-rate sensitive realty and auto stocks also did well on the eve of the policy meet. In the realty space, HDIL jumped 3.2% at Rs 164 and DLF added 1.2% at Rs 255. And the auto space saw the likes of Maruti and M&M gaining 2.9% and 2.2% each. In case of Maruti, though, the reported product price hike across models by up to Rs 8,000 in an attempt to combat the rising input costs was also a determining factor in its stock performance for the day.
And Tata Steel spurted by 3% at Rs 648 as its follow-on public offer (FPO) was well-received by the investor community. The issue, which closed on January 21, was subscribed by 6.03 times.
On the other hand, Wipro continued its bad run after failing to meet market expectations in the third quarter; the IT major slid by 2.5% at Rs 444. RIL dipped further below the 1000k mark, shedding another 1.5% at Rs 971, on concerns about a slowdown in gas production from the KG-D6 field. Cipla and RCom were the other significant losers.
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The market breadth was positive. Out of 2976 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1629 advancing stocks as against 1143 declines.