The rally sparked off on Wednesday by the announcement of fresh sops for the infotech and pharmaceutical sectors continued yesterday. The 30-scrip Bombay Stock Exchange sensex rose 219 points to close at 4,553.92.
In the process, the market capitalisation of all scrips listed on the BSE surged 4.62 per cent or Rs 33,606 crore to Rs 7,61,650 crore.
Foreign institutional investors made net purchases of Rs 113.60 crore or $26 million on Wednesday. However, most cement stocks closed with minor losses due to the drop in cement prices.
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The lower closing of the Nasdaq on Wednesday failed to have any significant impact on Indian bourses as the sensex opened almost 50 points higher at 4,384.53. It touched an intra-day high of 4,568.54 points on select buying in ICE stocks.
However, profit-booking ahead of the end of account settlement on the BSE pared some of the gains.
The Business Standard ICE Index of convergent economy stocks posted a hefty surge of 8.82 per cent or 16.85 points to close at 207.87. Wipro, an ICE heavy weightaged scrip gained 12 per cent to close at Rs 2,953. Similarly Satyam Computers also ended the day with gain of 12 per cent at Rs 2,923. The S&P CNX Nifty also ended the day with a gain of 64.50 points at 1,380.55.
Almost all the ICE sector stocks like Satyam Computers, Himachal Futuristic, Global Telesystem, Infosys, Pentamedia Graphics, Zee Telefilms, DSQ Software, NIIT, Wipro, Silverline, SSI, HCL Infosys etc ended the day by recording gains between 9-12 per cent. Other stocks like Hindustan Lever Limited, German Remedies, Sun Pharma, E Merck, Ranbaxy, Cipla etc too ended the day with substantial gains. However cement majors like Gujarat Ambuja Cement, ACC and Gracim ended the day with losses.
The aggregate volumes at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) were higher at Rs 3,020.35 crore as compared to Rs 2,430.67 crore at the Bombay Stock Exchange. Of the 140 stocks traded at the forward group, there were 106 gainers and only 31 losers. Similarly at the NSE-50 there were only 6 losers as compared to 43 gainers.