The market seems to have given a thumbs-up to the Union Budget 2006-07. While auto, cement, engineering and FMCG stocks rallied, oil & gas stocks tumbled today. The Sensex began on a promising note by opening 27 points higher at 10,309. As the Finance Minister delivered his Budget Speech, the index pared gains. Once the speech was over, the index plunged to a low of 10,206 as market players grappled with the expected impact of the 25% hike in STT rates.However, renewed buying at lower levels saw the index bounce back into positive zone. As the buying gained momentum, the index rallied to a new peak of 10,423 - up 2.1% (217 points) from the day's low. The Sensex finally settled with a smart gain of 88 points at 10,370.The BSE FMCG Index rallied 2.5% to 1970 followed by the Capital Goods Index, up 2.3% at 7399. The Auto Index gained 1.5% to 4999. However, the Oil & Gas Index dropped 1% to 4436 following the burden of higher cess on the oil sector.The market breadth was marginally negative. Out of 2,540 stocks traded, 1,370 declined, 1,113 advanced and 57 were unchanged today.BHEL surged nearly 6% to Rs 2,026. Larsen & Toubro gained 1.5% at Rs 2,397.ACC soared over 5% to Rs 628. Grasim rallied 4.4% to Rs 1,742.While ITC flared up 4% to Rs 173, HLL moved up 1.5% to Rs 242.Maruti zoomed 4.3% to Rs 823. Tata Motors gained 3.6% to Rs 814 and Bajaj Auto added 1.5% to Rs 2,601. ICICI Bank advanced 3.5% to Rs 615. HDFC Bank moved up 1% to Rs 736.Tata Steel spurted over 2% to Rs 431. Reliance and Reliance Energy gained over 1% each to Rs 709 and Rs 619, respectively.ONGC slumped 3.6% to Rs 1,136. NTPC shed 1.8% to Rs 131, and HDFC declined 1.7% to Rs 1,356.Ranbaxy tumbled nearly 3% to Rs 429, and Dr.Reddy's dropped 1% to Rs 1,303.Tata Power, Satyam and SBI slipped 1.5% each to Rs 511, Rs 769 and Rs 877 respectively.While 200 stocks hit their upper limits, 154 touched lower limits today.Jindal Photo zoomed 14.5% to Rs 183. Bombay Burmah, Ansal Infrastructure, Goodricke, Williamson Tea, Harrison Malyalam, Agro Dutch, S.Kumars, Hindustan Sanitary, Ballarpur Industries, Geometric Software and Tamilnadu Newsprint rallied 5-12% each.Oil & gas stocks tumbled today. IOC plunged over 5% to Rs 555. BPCL, Chennai Petro, Essar Oil, HPCL, MRPL and Petronet also ended with substantial losses.FACT and IFCI plunged 11.5% each to Rs 31.10 and Rs 10.94, respectively. Chambal Fertilisers, National Fertilisers, iGate Global, Gujarat Narmada, Videocon Appliances, Nagarjuna Fertilisers, Dewan Housing, GSFC, Arvind Mills, Srei Infrastructure and Gruh Finance declined 5-8% each. Reliance led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 226.72 crore followed by Maruti (Rs 194.55 crore), SBI (Rs 139.51 crore), Infosys (Rs 132.19 crore) and Tata Motors (Rs 128.31 crore).IFCI topped the volume chart with trades of around 87.25 lakh shares followed by ITC (62.21 lakh), IDFC (39 lakh), SAIL (32.86 lakh) and Reliance (32.12 lakh).
