The day clearly belonged to the bulls. The markets rallied nearly 2% to touch a 31-month high, bolstered by a favourable global environment and resurgence in the metal and oil space. The Sensex ended at 18560, stronger by 338 points and the Nifty ended at 5576, up 97 points, with all the sectoral indices ending in the green. And in line with the benchmark indices, the midcap index ended at 7961, higher by 102 points and the smallcap index ended at 10094, up 181 points.
Everything seemed to go according to plan. Wall Street had jumped on Friday, with the Dow gaining 122 points or 1.2% and Nasdaq adding 33 points at 2333 after a government report on employment beat expectations and encouraged investors. US payrolls fell for a third straight month in August, the Labor Department said, but the loss of 54,000 non-farm jobs was far less than the expected 100,000. Asian stocks had an upbeat session, with the Hang Seng and Nikkei adding nearlY 2%, while Straits Times, Seoul and Taiwan adding upto a percent each. And the European indices, including the FTSE, CAC and DAX were comfortably placed in mid-day trades.
Metals called the shots on the bourses after a string of upbeat economic data from the US and China last week raised optimism about the demand for metals. The BSE Metal index was up 36.4% to 15,878 and was the top gainer among the sectoral indices on the BSE. Tata Steel soared by 6.6% at Rs 575 to top the individual gainers list on the BSE. Hindalco jumped by 4.7% at Rs 178 on announcing capital expenditure plans of Rs 40000 crore over the next five years and Sterlite added 3.6% at Rs 164.
Oil stocks did well largely due to the revival on the RIL counter, which gained 2.9% at Rs 953, and able support from the likes of HPCL (up 1.4% at Rs 517) and Gail (up 1.4% at Rs 467).
In the banking space, ICICI Bank strengthened by 3.8% at Rs 1037, SBI gained 3% at Rs 2858 and HDFC Bank added 0.5% at Rs 2205. And the realty space saw HDIL hardening by 3.5% at Rs 275, Unitech gaining 2.9% at Rs 83 and Indiabulls Real Estate adding 1.8% at Rs 179.
RNRL gained 1.5% at Rs 39 and Reliance Power added 1.4% at Rs 158 as their respective shareholders approved a proposed merger between the two companies. Besides creating a Rs 50,000 crore entity, the merger will help R Power to access gas and achieve the goal of 37,000mw of capacity in the next decade.
Stocks to buck the strong trend included Hero Honda (weakened by 1.9% at Rs 1702), RCom (shed 0.3% at Rs 162) and Hindustan Unilever (lost 0.2% at Rs 271).
The market breadth was strong. Out of 3076 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 2070 advancing stocks as against 884 declines.