Sensex recovers 67 points

THE DAY AFTER

Global markets bounced back today after registering a steep fall yesterday. In India, stocks made good some of Thursday's losses and the rupee gained marginally but bonds witnessed another day of fall on concerns about rising oil prices and inflation.

Among the global markets, those of Europe showed a reasonably strong rebound and Asian stocks had mixed fortunes while US stocks opened flat. The dollar was steady and gold gave up its gains.

The BSE Sensex opened with a positive gap and hit the day's high of 7240 before closing at 7212.08, 66.95 points higher than the previous close. The rupee strengthened, though marginally, to end at 43.615/62 from Thursday's close of 43.645/65 on the back of steady foreign capital inflows.

However, sentiments in the bond markets failed to improve: yield on the benchmark 10-year paper 7.38 per cent 2015 closed at 7.20 per cent against a close of 7.14 per cent.

"The bounce-back after yesterday's crash was purely on back of strong liquidity provided by institutional investors. The focus seems to be back on mid cap stocks, but the undertone in the market is still very cautious with a negative bias," a broker said about the Sensex rally.

Interestingly, when the markets plunged 142 points on Thursday in response to the terrorist attacks in London, foreign institutional investors remained buyers to the tune of Rs 405.90 crore. Domestic mutual funds were net sellers, selling equities worth Rs 103.30 crore.

The breadth of the market turned positive today with 1717 stocks advancing against 752 declining. Of the 30 shares in the BSE basket, only six stocks ended negative. The volumes, too, were decent and accounted for Rs 2844.74 crore on the BSE and Rs 5509.28 crore on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Among the major losers in frontline stocks, the Bharti Tele-Ventures scrip was up 5.07 per cent to Rs 253.70, the Tata Steel scrip up 2.01 per cent to Rs 361.10, Larsen & Toubro up 1.93 per cent to Rs 1223.20, NTPC gained 1.84 per cent to Rs 88.75, Wipro scrip ended 1.71 per cent higher to close at Rs 722.45, HDFC Bank up 1.58 per cent to 650.10 and the ITC scrip was up 1.46 per cent to 1704.05.

The BSE Consumer Durables Index was the biggest gainer, up 4.15 per cent to 2149.81, followed by the BSE Small-cap Index, up 1.82 per cent to 4519.37. The BSE Metal Index was down 1.65 per cent to 5522.87. But all the other indices ended on a positive note today.