Sensex soars to 11,307 points

F&O turnover at historic high of Rs 47,272 crore.

Short covering ahead of the futures and options (F&O) expiry for March lifted the market for the second day in a row.

Buoyed by large-scale fund-based buying in pharmaceutical, oil and gas, metal, FMCG and PSU stocks, the BSE Sensex closed at a new high of 11,307.04, up 123.56 points, or 1.10 per cent.

The Nifty ended at 3,418.95, up 64.75 points, or 1.93 per cent, after touching a high of 3,433.85 points. With this, the Sensex gained for the fifth session in a row.

Analysts said global trends played a role in triggering Thursday's rally with the Nasdaq hitting a five-year high. The highlight of Thursday's trading was a surge in turnover on the back of block deals in a number of stocks.

The total turnover on the Bombay Stock Exchange was Rs 5,302 crore and that on the National Stock Exchange, Rs 12,352.16 crore. The turnover in the F&O segment hit an all-time high of Rs 47,272.22 crore. Long positions in the market continued to get rolled with around 49 per cent of the market wide positions being shifted to April.

The market breadth improved considerably on Thursday: Of the 2,535 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,716 moved up and only 757 declined.

In step with the trend, gains made by the BSE small-cap index were higher than those of the Sensex at 1.6 per cent though the mid-caps moved in line with the 30-stock index on the BSE on Thursday.

The BSE FMCG index outperformed the other indices in late trade. It closed at 2,224.79 points, up 2.33 per cent with heavy buying seen in Shaw Wallace, Nestle, ITC, Nirma, Hindustan Lever and Colgate.

Major gainers on Thursday were Ranbaxy, ONGC, Wipro, ITC, Grasim and Hindustan Lever. Ranbaxy soared 10 per cent to Rs 452 on the news of yet another acquisition of a Belgian company; Bharti Tele rallied 5.4 per cent to Rs 415; Wipro surged 4 per cent to Rs 564 and added 3.6 per cent to Rs 1,968.

ONGC flared up 3.6 per cent to Rs 1,337. HDFC Bank advanced over 3 per cent to Rs 771 while ITC (Rs 199), Grasim (Rs 2,039), Hindustan Lever (Rs 273) and Hindalco (Rs 183) ended with gains of 2-3 per cent each.

SRF, Bata India, Punjab Alkalies, Titanor, Hindustan Zinc, Sadbhav Engineering, KM Sugar, Indra Gas, Asian Electronics, Bombay Dyeing, RPG Transmission, SAIL, Ramco System and HCL Technologies were the other major gainers on Thursday.

Tech stocks were also in the limelight on expectations of impressive results against the backdrop of a weakening dollar. HCL Tech gained by 7 per cent to Rs 677, TCS gained by 4 per cent to Rs 1,968, and Rolta was up by 2 per cent to Rs 272.

Satyam topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 176.58 crore followed by HDFC (Rs 155.23 crore), Ranbaxy (Rs 140.66 crore), Grasim (Rs 132.26 crore) and VSNL (Rs 127.90 crore).

Essar Shipping led the volume chart with trades of around 2.31 crore shares followed by SAIL (1.27 crore), Mysore Cement (1 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (67.31 lakh) and Chemplast (52.13 lakh).