The Sensex today opened with a positive gap of 91 points at 17,118, after a trading holiday yesterday, as global cues continued to remain bullish. The markets, thereafter, exhibited firm movement throughout the day with metals and auto stocks leading the upmove.
The Sensex touched a high of 17,275, and finally settled with a gain of 204 points at 17,231.
In the process, the index today recorded a near new 17-month closing high. The Sensex had last closed around these levels on May 21, 2008. The index has also gained 3.5% (588 points) in the last two trading sessions recovering all its losses in the preceding week.
The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,840 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,685 advanced and 1,075 declined today.
The NSE Nifty touched a high of 5,127, and ended with a gain of 64 points at 5,118.
Mahindra & Mahindra soared over 6% to Rs 671. Sterlite surged 5.4% to Rs 852.
Hindalco and Jaiprakash Associates rallied 5% each to Rs 135 and Rs 252, respectively.
Tata Steel and SBI moved up around 4.5% each to Rs 572 and Rs 2,269, respectively.
Tata Motors gained 4% at Rs 573. BHEL was up 3% at Rs 2,499.
Telecom stocks, however, underperformed again and ended with significant losses despite the overall bullishness. Reliance Communications was the major loser down 6.5% at Rs 232, as price-war coupled with the said government audit report weighed on the investor sentiment. Bharti Airtel shed 3.3% at Rs 339.
Reliance Infrastructrue was down 2.6% at Rs 1,322.
Other prominent gainers included - PTC India up nearly 21% at Rs 105. Sesa Goa, Jindal Steel, GVK Power, Punj Lloyd, Hindustan Construction, Cadila Healthcare, Essar Oil, IVRCL Infra and Indiainfoline up 7-14% each.
On the other hand, Jet Airways plunged 6.5% to Rs 400. UltraTech, Indiabulls Realestate, Ambuja Cement, Tata Communications, HPCL, BPCL, Idea Cellular and Lupin declined 3-4% each.
Bharti Airtel topped the combined value chart with a turnover of Rs 1,070.15 crore followed by Sesa Goa (Rs 1,069.80 crore), Reliance (Rs 882.66 crore), Jindal Steel (Rs 765.05 core) and SBI (Rs 761.37 crore).
Ispat Industries led the volume chart with trades of 82.56 million shares followed by Dish TV (68.89 million), Unitech (52.71 million), Sesa Goa (32.52 million) and Bharti Airtel (31.28 million).
