It was a marvellous recovery, to say the least. The markets recouped all their early losses and regained important psychological marks to end the session with decent gains. The Sensex reclaimed the 20k mark and nearly 300 points fronm intra-day lows to end at 20168, higher by 43 points and the Nifty ended at 6075, up 13 points, thanks to strength in the oil, IT and realty stocks. There was underperformance on the broader market front though, with the midcap index losing 39 points at 8272 and the smallcap index losing 15 points at 10613.
The markets had started the day on a precarious note, extending the two-day slide, and languished in the red throughout the morning session. But a smart bout of short-covering towards the end of trade pulled the indices from the brink.
The European stocks were trading lower in mid-day trades, with the key benchmark indices in France, Germany and UK shedding upto half a percent each. And the key benchmark indices in China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and Hong Kong were down around a percent each at close.
Wall Street had a mixed session over the weekend as a growing US foreclosure crisis undermined an initial boost after US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated more monetary stimulus was on the way. The Dow closed down 31 points at 11,062, while the Nasdaq added 33 points at 2,468.
Back home, the initial public offer (IPO) of state-run Coal India was subscribed 34% by late noon on day one. The issue, which is billed as India's largest ever, closes on Thursday. The government plans to raise about Rs 15,000 crore from divestment of 10% stake in Coal India.
Information technology stocks, which had received a hammering post the Infy results on Friday, came back into the reckoning in today's session. TCS jumped by 2.9% at Rs 979 and Infosys gained 1% at Rs 3107. The other significant gainers included NTPC (gained 1.7% at Rs 206) and Tata Steel (added 1.5% at Rs 646).
On the other hand, ACC weakened by 2.8% at Rs 970, Bharti Airtel shed 2.2% at Rs 326 and Jaiprakash Associates lost 1.8% at Rs 128.
