Sensex ends up 69pts, Tata Steel soars 6%

The Sensex opened a tad (five points) higher at 12,792, but dropped to a low of 12,712 due to mixed signals from the global markets.

Fresh buying at lower levels saw the index rebound in late morning trades. Steady buying in cement and metal stocks, coupled with a sudden bout of buying in banking stocks, saw the index rally to a high of 12,899 - up 187 points from the day's low.

Some profit-taking towards the end of the day saw the index pare gains and settle with a gain of 69 points at 12,856.

The Sensex, however, ended the week with a loss of 216 points owing to Monday's steep fall of 617 points.

The BSE Metal index surged 3% to 8624, and the Bankex rallied 2% to 6372.

The market breadth was positive today - out of 2,578 stocks traded, 1,657 advanced and 854 declined.

MORE SMILES

Tata Steel soared over 6% to Rs 465. Reliance Energy surged 2.7% to Rs 501, and Grasim moved up 2.4% to Rs 2,113.

ICICI Bank and HDFC advanced over 2% each to Rs 839 and Rs 1,530, respectively. HDFC Bank was up almost 2% at Rs 943.

Cipla gained nearly 1.5% at Rs 233. Maruti, Hindalco and SBI added 1.3% each to Rs 756, Rs 132 and Rs 948, respectively.

HLL, ACC and Gujarat Ambuja were up around 1% each at Rs 200, Rs 722 and Rs 106, respectively.

Dr.Reddy's slipped over 2% to Rs 729. Hero Honda shed 1.8% to Rs 632, and NTPC dropped 1.4% to Rs 159.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Indiabulls Real Estate topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 176 crore followed by MindTree (Rs 159 crore), IFCI (Rs 144 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 114 crore) and Reliance Communications (Rs 61.55 crore).

IFCI led the volume chart with trades of around 4.25 crore shares followed by Indiabulls Real Estate (66.43 lakh), Balrampur Chini (39.15 lakh), NTPC (29 lakh) and Tata Steel (24.80 lakh).