Sensex surges 215pts, banking, oil stocks rally

The Sensex opened a tad (nine points) higher at 14,089. Weakness in morning trades saw the index slip to a low of 14,059. The index, however, bounced back into the positive zone and exhibited range-bound movement for most part of the trading day.

Agressive buying, mainly in heavyweights Reliance, ICICI Bank, ONGC and Tata Steel in the latter half of the day saw the index soar to a high of 14,311 - up 252 points from the day's low. The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 215 points (1.5%)at 14,295.

The BSE Bankex and Oil & Gas index surged nearly 3% each to 7681 and 7645, respectively. The Metal index advanced 1.8% to 10,611, and the Auto index added 1.4% to 4697.

The market breadth is positive - out of 2,628 stocks traded, 1,399 advanced, 1,146 declined and 83 were unchanged today.

BIGGIES DAY OUT

SBI zoomed over 4% to Rs 1,372. Larsen & Toubro, Tata Steel and Reliance soared around 3.5% each to Rs 1,996, Rs 609 and Rs 1,727, respectively.

Grasim, Reliance Communications, ICICI Bank, ONGC, Tata Motors and Gujarat Ambuja surged around 3% each to Rs 2,450, Rs 504, Rs 944, Rs 915, Rs 664 and Rs 113, respectively.

ACC rallied 2.5% to Rs 843. Hero Honda, BHEL and Bajaj Auto advanced nearly 2% each to Rs 666, Rs 1,405 and Rs 2,118, respectively.

Maruti, HDFC Bank, NTPC, Reliance Energy and HDFC were up around 1% each at Rs 751, Rs 1,100, Rs 151, Rs 536 and Rs 1,776, respectively.

Satyam slipped 1.8% to Rs 468, and Infosys declined 1.6% to Rs 1,957.

MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS

Time Technologies topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 180.41 crore followed by HTMT Global (Rs 165 crore), Nitin Fire (Rs 137.80 crore), MIC Electronics (Rs 130.50 crore) and Reliance (Rs 127.80 crore).

Debutant Decolight led the volume chart with trades of around 1.60 crore shares followed by IKF Technologies (1.15 crore), G V Films (77.50 lakh), IFCI (70.30 lakh), and Reliance Natural (57.80 lakh).