Sensex displays solid strength

The market witnessed a sharp pull-back after dipping around 250 points in early trades. The rally was mainly triggered by the buoyancy in heavyweights, FMCG, banking, and realty stocks. The Sensex resumed with a negative gap of 50 points at 20,637 tracking weak Asian indices on concerns of rising unemployment in US confirming the possible recession. However, sustained buying in frontline stocks thereafter helped the Sensex to turn positive to touch the day's high of 20,861. Firm openings in European indices also contributed to rally the market. The market saw profit bookings in the afternoon and shed some of its early gains but, it regained strength towards the close. The Sensex finally wrapped up the session at 20,813, up 126 points. The Nifty closed by adding five points at 6,279.

Among the sectoral indices, the FMCG index led the upsurge with gains of 3.34% at 2,505 followed by the BSE Bankex index (up 2.46% at 12,198) and the BSE Realty index (up 2.40% at 13,604). The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,926 stocks traded on the BSE 1,572 stocks advanced, 1,338 stocks declined and 16 stocks ended unchanged.

Out of the 30 Sensex stocks, 12 managed to end in the green while 18 stocks ended with losses. ICICI Bank was the leading gainer and soared 6.11% at Rs1,364. ITC jumped 5.26% at Rs231, Reliance Communication shot up by 3.95% at Rs790, Reliance Energy advanced 2.94% at Rs2,584, HLL moved up by 2.55% at Rs237, DLF added 2.09% at Rs1,136 and Reliance Industries gained 1% at Rs3,016. Among the laggards Infosys dropped 3.35% at Rs1,638, ONGC shed 3.26% at Rs1,300, TCS declined by 2.88% at Rs976, Wipro fell 2.72% at Rs483 and HDFC Bank slipped 2.38% at Rs1,657.

Over 2.93 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Centurion Bank of Punjab (2.80 crore shares), Hindustan Motors (2.34 crore shares), IFCI (2 crore shares) and Reliance Petroleum (1.71 crore shares).

Reliance Natural Resources registered a turnover of Rs651 crore on the BSE followed by Reliance Petroleum (Rs427 crore), Hindustan Motors (Rs214 crore), Parsvanath (Rs211 crore) and Centurion Bank of Punjab (Rs204 crore).