Sensex up 56 pts; Reliance, Zee lead rally

The Sensex opened with a steady gain of six points over its last close at 6,556. Though early profit-booking dragged the index to a low of 6,552, it soon recovered to surge past the 6,600-mark in early noon trades.

While the market was extremely buoyant in the afternoon trades, the Sensex came off-highs in mid-noon trades amid steady selling pressure in select counters.

The Sensex, however, firmed up in late noon trades to touch an intra-day high of 6,617 before closing 56 points higher at 6,606.

Reliance flared up 2.73% (Rs 15) to Rs 571. ITC jumped 1.70% (Rs 23) to Rs 1,373, and HLL rose 2.59% (Rs 3) to Rs 133. ONGC, on late buying support, was up Rs 4 at Rs 916.

Zee vaulted 5.69% (Rs 8) to Rs 148 on strong buying support.

Grasim added 1.59% (Rs 19) to Rs 1,230. Gujarat Ambuja and ACC were up a per cent each at Rs 413 (up Rs 4) and Rs 364 (up Rs 2), respectively.

Wipro (up Rs 9 to Rs 669), Infosys (up Rs 12 to Rs 2,232) and Satyam (up Rs 4 to Rs 421) ended with steady gains.

HDFC Bank gained 1.94% (Rs 10) to Rs 553. SBI was up a per cent (Rs 6) at Rs 652. ICICI Bank, however, ended marginally lower at Rs 424.

BHEL at Rs 812 (up Rs 11 or 1.35%), HPCL at Rs 322 (up Rs 6 or 1.75%), Tisco at Rs 390 (up Rs 8 or 2%) and Tata Power at Rs 352 (up Rs 6 or 1.66%) advanced on decent buying support.

Tata Motors moved up 1.49% (Rs 6) to Rs 412, and Maruti clocked 1.37% gains (Rs 5) to Rs 408. Bajaj, however, dropped 1.67% (Rs 18) to Rs 1,066, and Hero Honda slipped a per cent (Rs 5) to Rs 535.

While Bharti tumbled 2.32% (Rs 5) to Rs 212, HDFC lost 1.45% (Rs 10) to Rs 713.

The sentiment was clearly bullish - Out of 2,282 scrips traded, 1,532 advanced, 672 declined and 78 were unchanged today. The BSE FMCG, BSE Metal and BSE Oil & Gas indices closed with gains of over 1% each.

Ispat topped the volume chart with trades in over 41 lakh shares followed by SAIL (30.76 lakh shares) and Tata Steel (29.70 lakh shares).

Reliance was the most active counter with a traded value of Rs 148.53 crore followed by HOEC (Rs 106.45 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 82.71 crore).