The markets surged in late noon to cap a firm session of trade, sans the volatility of the previous two weeks and the choppiness that marked the trading activity on Monday, on the back of a rally in the IT and metal counters. Arresting the downtrend, atleast for now, the Sensex regained the 19k mark and made further inroads to end at 19106, higher by 224 points, and the Nifty ended at 5699, up 44 points. On the broader market front, the midcap index ended at 7137, up 14 points and the smallcap index ended at 8880, up 12 points.
The IT index had a cracker of a time to spurt around 2% and emerge as the leading gainer on the BSE. Building on the gains of the previous session, TCS soared 5.4% to an all-time high of Rs 1,200 after its consolidated net profit rose 9.24% to Rs 2,370 crore on the back of 4.05% growth in net sales to Rs 9,663 crore on q-o-q basis. The growth was led by the developed markets such as the United States and Europe, with strong contributions from Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa. Wipro ended higher by 2.7% at Rs 479 ahead of its financial results, scheduled later in the evening, for the third quarter ended December 2010 and Infosys overcame the disappointment of its numbers to harden by 1.5% at Rs 3318. And HCL Technologies, which declares its Q2 results on January 19, jumped 2.7% at Rs 488. And the metal index came a close second, with Sterlite soaring by 4.4% at Rs 177, Jindal Steel gaining 3% at Rs 690 ansd Tata Steel adding 1.5% at Rs 3318.
The rally on the European bourses would have also contributed to the positive sentiment back home. The CAC, DAX and FTSE gained in the region of a percent each in mid-day trading. The Asian markets, however, had a mixed session of trade. The Hang Seng reversed earlier gains to trade lower by 0.2%, while Japan's Nikkei received a boost from property and banking shares to edge higher by 16 points at 10,518. Seoul edged down 0.2%, hurt by falls in autos and petrochemical companies and Korea Composite ended down 0.1% at 2,096 points. The Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.1% at 2708. Wall Street was closed on Monday on account of the Martin Luther King holiday.
Among the majors that declared their results towards the close of the previous session, Axis Bank jumped by 4.2% at Rs 1279 and L&T inched higher by 0.1% at Rs 1683. The private lender Axis Bank posted a net profit up 35.82% at Rs 891.36 crore in the December quarter compared to Rs 655.98 crore a year ago. And India's largest engineering company, L&T posted a net profit of Rs 841 crore for the third quarter of 2010-11, about 11% higher than Rs 696 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.
On the other hand, Reliance Infra witnessed selling pressure for the second consecutive session to end lower by 4.5% at Rs 702 and thereby top the list of losers on the BSE. This was despite the damage control exercise initiated over the weekend in response to the Sebi order barring Anil Ambani from investing in the shares of listed companies and prohibiting Reliance Infra and the erstwhile RNRL from stock market investments till 2012. However, recouping their earlier losses, RCom edged higher by 0.2% at Rs 132 and Reliance Capital ended higher by 0.8% at Rs 578. But index bellweather RIL ended below the 1000k mark at Rs 994, down 0.3%.
The market breadth was marginally positive. Out of 3001 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1485 advancing stocks as against 1293 declines.