Bulls stage a comeback

STOCK REPORT

The benchmark BSE Sensex bounced back with a 134 point or 1.17 per cent gain on Wednesday, reversing a three day old declining trend. Several market players, who were expecting the market to continue its downward streak further on Wednesday, were surprised when the Sensex closed higher at 7,729.82, ignoring some major negatives to the market.

However, the benchmark index has gained only a part of the 201-point loss it suffered during the last three sessions. The NSE Nifty closed with a gain of 41.45 points at 2360.15 points. The high for the day was 2364.80.

"The bull market returned with a vengeance overcoming the aberration of sustained correction over the last three days. High liquidity and sustained FII inflows have made the bulls to gain the lost ground, even by ignoring the negatives such as spiralling global crude prices and interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve yesterday," an analyst told Business Standard.

"The pull back of Sensex was quite sharp and surprised many as several players were expecting the declining trend to continue for a few sessions more. The players in this unpredictable scenario should be able to take decisions fast, otherwise the scenario changes rapidly making the decision infructuous," a dealer with a leading broking firm said.

All the 17 BSE indices were in the positive region in a broadly secular rally. Metals and small-cap stocks led the rally with indices posting a 2.98 per cent rise on Wednesday, followed by TECk and IT stocks the indices of which rose by 2.89 per cent and 2.79 per cent, respectively. Consumer durables and Bankex and Midcap indices have risen by over two percentage points on Wednesday.

Market breadth soared high on Wednesday with over 77 per cent of the stocks registering gains. The advances were at 2,024 stocks (77.25 per cent), 543 declined (20.73 per cent), while 53 stocks (2.02 per cent) remained unchanged.

Satyam Computer led the gainers among the Sensex stocks with a gain of 5.36 per cent to touch Rs 524.20, followed by Bharti Tele with a gain of 4.21 per cent to touch Rs 303.356. SBI was the major gainer among the banking stocks with a gain of 4.06 per cent to Rs 808.

Tata Power, Grasim, Infosys, TCS, Reliance, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank continued their gains, but ONGC, NTPC, Gujarat Ambuja and Maruti lost their ground.

With the recovery of markets, there was momentum in some metal stocks. Jindal Steel led the steel rally, notching up over 7 per cent, while SAIL, Tisco and Sesa Goa adding handsome gains.

Banking scrips were back in the limelight after shedding some of the earlier gains with the correction. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and State Bank of India surged over one per cent each, while ING Vysya added nearly 6 per cent.

Oil companies, particularly PSU refinery companies suffered losses in the wake of price spiral in international crude. Bharat Petroleum is the biggest loser among them which shed close to 3 per cent. ONGC and Chennai Petroleum also lost ground, but HPCL added some gains closing the day at Rs 307.