The Hindu Business Line : Latter-day buying props up bourses

THE much-awaited return of buoyancy at the stock markets seemed to have arrived with the major indices bouncing back and staging a recovery during the latter half of trading on Wednesday.

After a consecutive losing streak spread over the past few trading sessions, the day's gains came as a relief to most market players.

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Further, the upsurge in buying support in the second half of the trading session and the strong near 2.5 per cent jump in the indices seems to suggest the possible beginning of a broader rally.

Overall, aided by some of the positive economic factors, new Budget measures and the continued inflow of good corporate results, the feelgood factor seems to have returned to the markets.

The rally was largely fuelled by the stellar performance of some of the major index heavyweights and by the gains posted by stocks in the technology and PSU segments.

After opening at 5,633 points, the BSE's Sensitive Index (Sensex) moved up during early hours of trade. However, weak institutional support pulled it down into negative territory - to a low of 5,574 points - by mid-session.

However, brisk buying during the second half led to a surge and the index closed the day at 5,756.7 points, after testing an intra-day high of 5,769.8 points.

The 136-point gain represents a rise of 2.42 per cent from the previous close, but it was still two per cent lower than the corresponding previous week's close of 5,876 points.

The index fluctuated between a near 200 points band during the day.

A total of 26 stocks posted gains; the total market capitalisation as at the close of trading was Rs 11,95,672 crore.

At the NSE, the S&P CNX Nifty index performed even better than the Sensex, posting a gain of over three per cent to close at 1,822 points.

Though the Nifty is heavy on technology, the chunk of gains did not come from these stocks.

Some of the major gainers were Zee Telefilms, National Aluminium, Oriental Bank, SAIL, Tata Chemicals, Tata Steel, M&M, Tata Motors, IPCL and GAIL.

The top gainers in the Sensex were Reliance Industries, Infosys Technologies, SBI, Tata Steel, HLL, L&T, Hindalco, HDFC Bank, Satyam Computers, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Tata Power, ONGC, Bharti Tele, BHEL, Hero Honda, ACC, MTNL, BSES, Gujarat Ambuja Cements and Bajaj Auto.

The only four losers were ITC, HDFC, Grasim Industries and Wipro. Institutional buying support was seen in banking, textiles, energy and power, automobiles and information technology. FMCG and engineering stocks closed with mixed fortunes.