The Hindu Business Line : Bank, oil and metal stocks lead market rally

The previous session was lopsided in favour of the Reliance group. This evened out in Tuesday's trade with the advances marginally outnumbering the losers.

Leading the pack were the bank, oil and metal stocks. The mid-cap and small-cap indices on the BSE chipped in with gains.

The Sensex, which opened almost flat at 6989.91 points, dipped into the red for a short span in the early hours. After touching the day's low of 6967.95, the Sensex surged northwards into the positive territory with continuous gains. The index closed at 7076.52 points with a gain of 91.97 points. The S&P CNX Nifty moving on similar lines closed with a gain of about 1.2 per cent.

The banking sector index on the BSE, Bankex, which lost about 65 points on Monday's trade, regained a large portion of its losses to close at 3954.44 points. Leading the rally were PSU banks - Union Bank, Allahabad Bank, Andhra Bank, Canara Bank, and Punjab National Bank. UTI Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Bank of India mitigated the rise in the BSE Bankex.

A seven-fold jump in volumes, compared to that on Friday, was reported on the Centurion Bank counter. The stock has gained 9 per cent since Friday.

The Bank of Punjab counter, which dipped 2.69 per cent to close at Rs 32.5. This drop comes after a 5-per cent rise on Monday. On Monday, the boards of the two companies approved of a merger.

The other gainer in the private sector domain was Karur Vysya Bank, which gained 2.16 per cent.

The metals-oriented index on the BSE outperformed the Sensex. The BSE Metal index gained 4.42 per cent in the last five sessions closed at 5554.23 points.

The major gainers among the steel stocks were Lloyds Steel, Jindal Stainless, Man Industries, Southern Ispat and Monnet Ispat all of which gained more than 3 per cent.

Aluminium stocks Hindalco and National Aluminium also contributed to the gains. Sesa Goa, which in the recent past lost value, has staged a comeback by returning to the Rs 600-mark. The stock has gained about 4.5 per cent in the past week.

i-flex Solutions gained Rs 12.85 to close at Rs 749.35 after the company announced that it is to acquire the intellectual property rights of the risk management software ORTOS from Capco. A six-fold jump in volumes of about 75,000 shares was clocked on i-flex's counter.

After information flowed into the market that Kopran would receive about Rs 20 crore for licensing three of its brands and the design for an asthma inhaler, the stock gained 6 per cent. A three-fold jump in volumes at 15.3 lakh shares was recorded on the BSE.

Buying support propelled SpiceJet (Royal Airways), which gained about 10 per cent. The company had announced plans of doubling its orders for Boeing planes to meet demand.

Two block deals, totalling 12 lakh shares, were reported on the counter of Hexaware Technologies. The bulk deals appeared to have propped up the stock by about 5 per cent.

Earlier in the day, Raymond announced plans of a 50:50 joint venture at a cost of Rs 40 crore along with Lanifico Fedora of Italy. The news appeared to have created buying interest among market participants, which pushed the stock northwards by 4.25 per cent to close at Rs 354.55.

Simplex Concrete Piles gained Rs 7 to close at Rs 672.55. The company had bagged an order worth Rs 100 crore from New Doha Hotels of Kolkata for its hotel project in Doha.

Prominent gainers among the Nifty constituents were Cipla, Gujarat Ambuja, ICICI Bank, HLL, Maruti, Reliance and ONGC. Significant losers were BPCL, Sun Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, BHEL, HPCL and MTNL.

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