Firm trade continues, Sensex up 140pts

The markets continue to trade in the green with the BSE Sensex at 17,334, up 141 points and the Nifty at 5,210, up 41 points. Earlier in the day, the BSE benchmark index touched a high of 17,392 and a low of 17,309.

On the sectoral front, BSE Healthcare, Teck, IT and Oil & Gas indices are leading the gains, up nearly 1% each.

Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Dr Reddy's Laboratories, up 2-3% each, are the major gainers among the healthcare stocks.

Tech Mahindra, CORE Education & Technologies and Wipro, up 2-3% each, are the prominent gainers from the IT space.

Petronet LNG, Cairn India, Essar Oil and Reliance Industries, up 1-3% each, are the major gainers among the Oil & Gas stocks.

On the Sensex, Sun Pharma Industries, HDFC Bank, Hindalco Industries, Hero Motocorp and Bharti Airtel, up 2-4% each, are the prominent gainers. The losers from the pack are Tata Steel, Coal India, ICICI Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Power, down 1-2% each.

Among individual stocks, Infotech Enterprises has rallied 8% to Rs 130 on back of huge volumes on the Bombay Stock Exchange. As many as 2.63 million shares have already changed hands on the counter till 1020 hours, as against an average less than 2,000 shares that were traded daily in past two weeks.

Wockhardt is trading higher by 3% to Rs 424 after reporting a consolidated net profit of Rs 128 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2011, as against a net loss of Rs 97 crore in a year ago quarter. Net sales grew 18% to Rs 1,111 crore on year-on-year basis.

Shree Renuka Sugars has plummeted more than 20% to Rs 41 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on reporting a net loss of Rs 618.5 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2011 due to higher interest and huge foreign exchange losses. The company had earned a net profit of Rs 128 crore in the same period last year. Total income decreased from Rs 2,490 crore to Rs 2,419 crore during the recently concluded quarter.

The overall market breadth is negative as 1,237 have advanced against 1,117 declining ones, on the BSE.