Reliance powers Sensex

RIL, RCom & REL account for almost 50% of the rally.

Three companies from the Reliance groups "" Reliance Industries of Mukesh Ambani and Reliance Communications and Reliance Energy of Anil Ambani "" account for almost half of the Sensex rally from 17,150 to 18,280. The Reliance stocks were also the largest gainers today, with their market cap gaining by over 7 per cent each.

Reliance Industries contributed 300 points, while Reliance Communications (134 points) and Reliance Energy (101 points) made a combined contribution 262 points. These three Reliance firms have a weightage of 21.2 per cent in the 30-scrip BSE Sensex.

The Sensex reported its second-fastest rally of 1,000 points, taking just eight trading days to achieve the new milestone of the 18K mark.

Earlier, between September 18 and September 27, in six trading days the Sensex moved from 16K to 17K.

In the previous 1,000-point rally, these three stocks had accounted 353.28 points, of which Reliance Industries alone accounted for 273.70 points.

Two Anil Ambani group companies, Reliance Communications (55.91 points) and Reliance Energy (23.67 points), have together contributed 79.58 points to the Sensex's gain.

Including these three Reliance group firms, the top-five companies contributed 68 per cent (764 points), while the top-ten stocks accounted for 88 per cent or 997 points to the Sensex rally of 1,130 points. Larsen and Toubro (128 points) and Infosys Technologies (101 points) are the two stocks among the top five, which contributed more than 100 points each.

The financial sector, which has the highest weightage of 21.55 per cent in the Sensex, contributed only 6.02 points in the current rally against 374.42 points contributed in the previous 1,000-point rally.

ICICI Bank, SBI and HDFC gained less than 1 per cent each, while the market price of HDFC Bank declined by 4.73 per cent from Rs 1,433.30 on September 27 to Rs 1,419.55 on October 9.

Information technology stocks, which were the laggards in the previous rally, contributed 153 points to the Sensex's gain. The sector has the third-highest weightage of 13.66 per cent after the oil and gas sector (18.48 per cent) in the index.

The telecommunication and capital goods sectors, which have almost 10 per cent weightage in the Sensex, have contributed 216.40 points and 179.36 points respectively.

The two power sector firms contributed 146.38 points to the rise in the Sensex.

Bharti Airtel (82 points), BHEL (52 points) and NTPC (45 points) contributed more than 40 points each, while Satyam Computer Services, Tata Steel and Maruti Suzuki contributed between 25 points and 30 points to the index's gain.