Sensex shrugs off FII blues, ends up 65pts

Despite the 217-point fall yesterday, the Sensex opened with a positive gap 25 points at 10,533 today. The index exhibited volatility in the opening deals as it fluctuated in and out of positive zone.

By early noon, bears got the upper hand - helped by the second consecutive huge negative numbers of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the derivatives segment. The index then slumped to a low of 10,377 - down 156 points from the open.

After dumping index futures worth Rs 1,500 crore on Tuesday, FIIs were net sellers in index futures to the tune of Rs 2,100 crore on Wednesday. FIIs also sold stock futures worth Rs 824 crore yesterday.

According to market sources, mutual funds pitched in at the right time and began buying frontline shares. As a result, the index perked up and thereafter displayed a range-bound movement for the major part of the trading.

Heavy buying, amid some short-covering, towards the close saw the index bounce into positive zone and rally to the day's high of 10,593 - up 216 points from the day's low. The Sensex finally ended with a smart gain of 65 points at 10,574.

The Bankex rallied 1% to 5205. The Capital Goods and Metal indices finished with decent gains at 7933 and 7601, respectively. The Auto Index, however, was down 0.8% at 5199.

The Nifty March futures, which were trading at a discount of 30 points yesterday and also for a major part of the trading today, finally settled with a 10-point discount to the spot Nifty at 3119. The Nifty ended at 3129 - up 12 points.

The market breadth changed from extremely bearish to slightly negative. Out of 2,557 stocks traded, 1,413 declined, 1,083 advanced and the rest were unchanged today.

Cement stocks witnessed agressive buying in the latter half of the day. Gujarat Ambuja soared over 6% to Rs 98. ACC rallied 5% to Rs 749, and Grasim surged over 4% to Rs 1,886.

Tata Steel spurted 2.3% to Rs 454. Dr.Reddy's moved up 2.2% to Rs 1,332. SBI and ICICI Bank advanced 2% each to Rs 906 and Rs 602, respectively.

Infosys added 1.6% to Rs 2,843. NTPC (Rs 136), Satyam (Rs 786), Reliance (Rs 727) and HLL (245) gained over 1% each.

Ranbaxy dropped 2.6% to Rs 420, and Cipla dropped 1.8% to Rs 575.

Hero Honda and Bharti Tele slipped 2.4% each to Rs 880 and Rs 383, respectively. Maruti declined nearly 2% to Rs 867.

HDFC ended with a loss of 1% at Rs 1,280.

While 216 stocks hit their upper limits, 142 touched thier lower limits today.

Morarjee Real Estate and Jagran Prakashan zoomed over 10% each to Rs 522 and Rs 285, respectively. Areva, KEC Infrastructure, Birla Corporation, Mysore Cement, Kesoram Industries, Reliance Natural Resources, Amar Remedies, Kotak Bank, CESC, JSW Steel and  Bombay Dyeing ended with gains of 5-10% each.

DCM Shriram Consolidated and Williamson Tea slumped over 5% each to Rs 80 and Rs 338, respectively. Crompton Greaves, KLG Systel, Whirpool, Indoco Remedies, VisualSoft, Godrej Consumers, Hexaware, Ramco Systems and MICO were the other prominent losers today.

Reliance Communication Ventures (RCoVL) topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 242.92 crore followed by Maruti (Rs 173.11 crore), Siemens (Rs 164 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 147.42 crore) and Indian Hotels (Rs 124.77 crore).

Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 3.78 crore shares followed by RCoVL (1.10 crore), Mysore Cement (53.93 lakh), Gujarat Ambuja (42.56 lakh) and Recron Sunthetics (42.34 lakh).