Winning streak continues

The market continued to add to its value for the fourth consecutive session as firm Asian indices and strong buying in frontline stocks helped the sentiment remain bullish for the whole trading session. After accumulating over 1,300 points in the last three sessions, the Sensex opened marginally above its previous close and rallied sharply to touch an intra-day high of 10,373. While, the market remained well above 10,100 mark in the first half, it came off the high, as traders booked profits at higher levels. However, resumption of buying at lower levels in realty and capital goods (CG) stocks towards the close saw the Sensex recover from its lows. The Sensex finally ended the session with a gain of 550 points at 10,338, while Nifty added 158 points to close at 3,044.

The market breadth was neutral. Of the 2,652 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,968 stocks advanced whereas 634 stocks declined. Fifty stocks ended unchanged. Among the sectoral indices, the BSE Realty jumped 8.29% followed by BSE CG (up 8.19%), BSE Bankex (up 7.51%) and BSE Power (up 6.14%).

Most of the heavyweights ended with solid gains though some select frontline stocks closed with marginal losses. Among the blue chips, Reliance Infrastructure shot up by 17.15% at Rs535.10, DLF soared 14.89% at Rs253.05, JP Associates surged 13.36% at Rs81.45 and Ranbaxy Laboratories advanced by 12.33% at Rs190.35. State Bank of India (SBI) added 11.81% at Rs1,240.55, Tata Motors moved up 11.12% at Rs190.90 and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) scaled up 10.78% at Rs892.25. Among the laggards Satyam Computer Services fell 1.54% at Rs300.10 and Infosys Technologies slipped 0.23% at Rs1,378.50.

Realty stocks shone in today's trades and closed with strong gains. Orbit Corporation vaulted 33.15% at Rs70.70, Peninsula Land soared 14.91% at Rs23.50, DLF surged 14.89% at Rs253.05 and Parsvnath Developers advanced by 11.59% at Rs45.25.

Over 2.13 crore Reliance Natural Resources shares changed hands on the BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (1.54 crore shares), Cals Refineries (0.99 crore shares), GVK Power & Infrastructure (0.89 crore shares) and Unitech (0.87 crore shares).