Sensex zooms 240pts, ICICI Bank soars 6%

The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 30 points at 12,736, but nervousness in early trades saw the index slip to a low of 12,664.

The index, thereafter, displayed range-bound movement for the major part of the session. Agressive buying, mainly in ICICI Bank, HLL, SBI & ITC,  in late noon deals saw the index rally to a high of 12,965 - up 301 points from the day's low. The Sensex finally settled with a gain of 240 points (1.9%) at 12,946.

The BSE Bankex rallied 4% to 6545. The FMCG index surged over 2%to 1666. The IT and Metal indices were up 1.4% each at 5007 and 8253, respectively.

The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,628 stocks traded, 1,370 declined, 1,155 advanced and 103 were unchanged today.

HEALTHY GAINS

ICICI Bank soared 5.6% to Rs 870. HLL has surged 3.7% to Rs 191.

Bharti Airtel, Reliance Energy and SBI rallied over 3% each to Rs 762, Rs 491 and Rs 982, respectively.

BHEL, ITC and ONGC moved up nearly 3% each to Rs 2,103, Rs 145 and Rs 813, respectively.

Hero Honda and Reliance Communications advanced around 2.5% each to Rs 651, Rs 410, respectively.

Infosys gained nearly 2% at Rs 2,094. Larsen & Toubro, Wipro, Reliance and Tata Steel were up around 1.5% each at Rs 1,502, Rs 582, Rs 1,340 and Rs 430, respectively.

Gujarat Ambuja plunged 4% to Rs 106. HDFC dropped 1.5% to Rs 1,543, and Ranbaxy slipped 1% to Rs 332.

MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS

MindTree topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 204.70 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 84.50 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs 78.60 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 64 crore) and SBI (Rs 54.35 crore).

IFCI led the volume chart with trades of around 1.07 crore shares followed by Centurion Bank of Punjab (51 lakh), Jagjanani (34 lakh), Tele Data (33.40 lakh) and AMD Metplast (30.35 lakh).