After a two-week interval, the bulls seemed to have come back to the driver's seat on the bourses as most indices broke their previous records on Tuesday. |
After being undergoing bouts of correction followed by rallies in the last few days, the Sensex on Tuesday put on nearly 1.46 per cent or 176 points to break the 12,200 mark within a few minutes of trade. |
It ended 18 points above the mark by the end of trade, though it slipped from above the 12,250 mark where it spent most of the trading day towards the closing bell. |
The Nifty ended with slightly lower gains with a 1.35 per cent gain over its previous close to end at 3605.45 after setting an all-time high of 3622 points. |
Foreign portfolio investors, which had induced the nervousness last month by resorting to profit-booking, also seemed to have made reversed their selling trend in Tuesday's market- they bought equities worth Rs 272 crore from the open market, the biggest net daily purchase since the beginning of March. |
Tuesday's rally on the Sensex was led mainly by pharmaceutical scrips Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy's which gained on prospects of gaining lucrative six-month exclusive-marketing rights to a cholesterol-reducing drug in the US-market. |
While Dr Reddy's, which put on nearly 17.5 per cent to end at Rs 1682 on the BSE, was bolstered after it announced that it had already entered into an agreement with the patent-holder to market the generic versions of the drug if some other company won the exclusivity deal. |
Ranbaxy put on 10.5 per cent to end at Rs 522 after a US court ruled against a US regulator ruling denying the Indian company and its Israeli partner the right to six-month exclusive marketing rights. |
Other contributors to both the Sensex and the Nifty gains were banking stocks, which went up on prospects on better earnings after a round of increase in their prime lending rates (PLR) which went up by around 0.5 per cent on most banks on Tuesday. |
Stocks of ICICI Bank, SBI and HDFC bank were behind the pharma scrips on the gainers list on the Sensex, with ICICI Bank, the biggest gainer, putting on nearly 5.4 per cent to end at Rs 622. |
Metal stocks too were another category of strong performers, with Jindal Steel and Hindalco gaining more than 5 per cent each, while Tata Steel and Essar Steel went up by less that 4 per cent. |
Among the losers on Tuesday were cement and technology stocks. ACC was the biggest loser on the Sensex with a 2.4 per cent drop, followed by Grasim Industries which lost 1.9 per cent due to profit-booking. |
Though Tuesday's gains were broadly-based with more than 60 per cent of the BSE 500 stocks ending up with gains, the extent of gains was much higher in the large-caps. Against a 1.46 per cent spurt in the Sensex, the small and mid-cap indices barely made it above the one per cent mark on Tuesday's gains. |
Reliance Communication Ventures, which made its debut on the Sensex on Tuesday, was the most actively traded stock on the BSE on Tuesday, with nearly half a crore shares accounting for more than Rs 160 crore turnover, changing hands on the counter. |
It was followed by Indiabulls, which slipped marginally after yesterday's euphoric run up, with more than 120 crore worth of business happening on the stock. |