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Monday, December 31, 2007

Mute welcome to the new year


The Sensex opened 116 points above its previous close tracking positive Asian markets. But, the market could not hold on to its gains as trading progressed on lack of buying support. However, the presence of bullish sentiment helped the market to remain in a range with a positive bias in the latter part of the session with buying in consumer durables, PSU and FMCG stocks. However, selling in frontline stocks towards the close saw the Sensex touch its day's low of 20,240. The Sensex finally closed the session with a gain of 80 points at 20,286, while the Nifty added 59 points at 6,139.

Breadth of the market was extremely positive on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) with gainers outpacing losers in the ratio of 7.02:1. Of the 2,930 stocks traded on the BSE 2,551 stocks advanced, 363 stocks declined and 16 stocks ended unchanged. Except the BSE IT index, all sectoral indices ended in positive territory. The BSE CD index ended firm with gains of 5.37% at 6,957, while the BSE PSU index rose 2.18% at 10,468, the BSE HC index added 1.84% at 4,419, the BSE FMCG index added 1.72% at 2,320 and the BSE Teck index moved up by 1.64% at 4,015.

Action in several index heavyweights lifted the market. Bharti Airtel led the pack and shot up by 5.72% at Rs995. NTPC soared 3.58% at Rs250, M&M surged 3.16% at Rs861, Ranbaxy flared up by 2.49% at Rs426, ITC jumped by 2.34% at Rs210, Reliance Communication added 1.90% at Rs747, ACC advanced by 1.59% at Rs1,025, Tata Motors was up 1.55% at Rs742. However, HDFC dropped 1.76% at Rs2,827, Ambuja Cement slipped 1.54% at Rs147, Infosys lost 1.52% at Rs1,768 and Cipla dipped 1.07% at Rs213 while Reliance Energy, HLL, Wipro, Reliance Industries, SBI and HDFC Bank slipped marginally.

Over 3.48 crore IFCI shares changed hands on the BSE followed by GV Films (2.54 crore shares), Ispat Industries (1.67 crore shares), GTL Infrastructure (1.63 crore shares), and Tata Teleservices (1.42 crore shares).

Valuewise, IFCI registered a turnover of Rs314 crore on the BSE followed by Eclerx (Rs275 crore), RNRL (Rs215 crore), Transformers & Rectifiers India (Rs191 crore) and Brigade Enterprises (Rs183 crore).