Spirit soars despite rains

STOCK REPORT

Despite heavy rains stalking Mumbai on Monday again, the stock markets closed on a positive note, leading to a new closing high of 7669.45 points, up 34.03 points.

The benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex opened at 7632.01 points, just below last Friday's close. The stock market's sensitive index gyrated wildly in the morning session when the index was dragged down to a low of 7596.74 points before recovering by the close of the day.

The Sensex moved to an intra-day high of 7681.11 points. The National Stock Exchange (NSE) Nifty was up 5.7 points to close the day at 2318 points.

"Though many dealers could not make it to their offices in Mumbai due to heavy rains forecast on Monday, the volumes were very decent. The volumes picked up in the afternoon session, when the Sensex also spiraled to touch a new closing high," a dealer of a leading broking firm said.

BSE recorded a turnover of about Rs 2,300 crore against the recent trend of crossing the Rs 3,000-crore figure.

Consumer durables index led the charge with a gain of 2.23 per cent followed by auto (1.95 per cent) and health care sectors (1.70 per cent). Among the major losers were IT (0.80 per cent loss in index), TECk (0.64 per cent), and Bankex (0.60 per cent).

Ranbaxy Lab was the biggest gainer in Sensex with a gain of 9.34 per cent or Rs 44 to Rs 514. But other pharma stocks could not repeat the similar feat. Cipla was down 0.5 per cent at Rs 334. Dr Reddy's Lab fell by 0.8 per cent to Rs 828.

On the back of good showing in its quarterly performance FMCG major HLL rose Rs 7.1 or 4.2 per cent to close at Rs 174. But ITC was down by a per cent to 1663 points.

Power stocks were the board-based gainers with NTPC up 4.8 per cent at Rs 98, Reliance Energy up 3.7 per cent and Tata Power moving up by 2.8 per cent. Other gainers include auto stocks like Tata Motors by 4.1 per cent, Maruti by 2.3 per cent, two-wheeler major Hero Honda up 2.4 per cent.

However, weakness showed up in frontline technology counters - Satyam was down 1.2 per cent, Wipro fell by 1.5 per cent Infosys was down 0.3 per cent.

Banking stocks, which were the cynosure of the punters' eyes for over a month now, have suffered some set backs. SBI was down 1.4 per cent at Rs 789. ICICI Bank fell by 0.5 per cent to Rs 533.

Market width was constrained when 1,410 stocks (55.38 per cent) have declined against 1,070 stocks (42.03 per cent ) advanced during the day. There were about 66 unchanged stocks.