Buoyancy lifts Sensex to close at 16,949

The markets opened with an impressive gap up today tracking favorable cues from global markets. Good amount of buying in realty, metal, FMCG and banking space also helped the Sensex touch the day's high of 17,141 by mid-morning trades. However, sentiment remained buoyant for better part of the session, though selling in consumer durables, pharma and technology counters saw the Sensex give up its early gains to touch the day's low of 16,726, up 118 points its previous close. While the market moved between 16,700-16,900 range, the Sensex witnessed hectic buying activity in the last hour of the trading session and rallied sharply to close with a gain of 341 points at 16,949. The Nifty, too, after a mixed outing, moved up 91 points to close at 4,929.

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,742 scrips that traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 1,940 stocks declined, 768 stocks advanced and 34 stocks ended unchanged. Most of the sectoral indices ended in positive territory. The BSE Realty index surged 4.27% at 9,429, the BSE Metal index added 3.26% at 2,101, while the BSE Bankex index, the BSE Oil & Gas index and the BSE Power index gained over 2% each.

Buying was led by Tata Steel, which notched up gains of 6.72% at Rs758. Among the other gainers ITC advanced 5.98% at Rs196, BHEL added 5.52% at Rs1,982, HDFC Bank moved up 4.87% at Rs1,467, HDFC jumped by 3.91% at Rs2,725, ACC gained 3.72% at Rs745 and ICICI Bank was up 3.34% at Rs1,099. However, Cipla, Reliance Communications, Wipro, Bajaj Auto and Hindalco were down over 1-3%, while M&M and HLL closed with marginal losses.

Over 2.72 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by JP Associates (1.59 crore shares), Reliance Power (1.51 crore shares) and Reliance Petroleum (1.51 crore shares).

Reliance Power was the most actively traded counter on the BSE with a turnover of Rs531 crore followed by JP Associates (Rs429 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs349 crore), RNRL (Rs320 crore) and Tata Investment Corporation (Rs300 crore).