After having a weak opening, the BSE benchmark index has retraced its lost ground and has touched a high of 18,565 in the morning trades. Thereon the markets continue to trade in a close range of 40 points. Currently, the Sensex is up 49 points at 18,556 while the Nifty has added 11 points at 5,578.
The broader markets have gained strength since the opening with the smallcap index up nearly 0.6% and the midcap index added 0.3% outperforming, as compared to the Sensex which is up nearly 0.2%.
Among the sectoral indices, Auto and Realty indices continue to languish in the negative. However, Consumer Durables remain firm with a 1% gain. IT, Health Care and Oil & Gas are the other indices which are up 0.3-0.4%
The movers in the Consumer Durables space are Titan Industries up 2%, Videocon and VIP Industries adding 1% each. One the other hand, the draggers in the realty space are Indiabulls Real Estate, DLF and HDIL down 1% each.
The top gainers among the Sensex stocks are NTPC, Sterlite up 1% each followed by Infosys, Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, Hindalco, ICICI Bank and TCS adding 0.5-1%.
Among the losers are Tata Motors down 2%, DLF and Hero Honda down 1% each.
Among other individual stocks, Seamec is frozen at the 10% upper limit at Rs 121, for the second consecutive day after the company entered into a long term Charter with M/s Hal Offshore for deployment of its vessel Seamec II for a period of three years.
Also, Gemini Communications soared 12% to Rs 29.65 after the comapny's board of directors approved the buyback of the company’s equity shares at a price not exceeding Rs 45 per equity share and up to an aggregate amount of Rs 29 crore.
The market breadth continues to be positive. Of the total 2217 stocks traded on the BSE, 1343 stocks advanced while 766 declined.