The Hindu Business Line : Grasim, IPCL make most out of bullish sentiment

THE Sensex's sail past the magical 8,000-point mark does not seem to have put the bulls on the horns of a dilemma. Monday's rampage at the markets clearly shows that the bulls are still fully in charge.

Despite a number of analysts and market watchers recommending caution and in spite of a wide spread belief that the markets seem to be getting overheated, the overall sentiment both in the institutional and individual investor segments continue to be bullish.

Valuations of many stocks listed on both the key stock exchanges continue to breach new highs and trading volumes are also consistently high. Most importantly, these pointers are not restricted to just the stocks that feature in the key indices, but are also evident amongst stocks in the mid-cap and small-cap space.

After a hesitant close during the last week's trading sessions, when crossing the 8,000-point mark took a while, this week's first trading session opened on a distinctly cheery note. Caution was nowhere to be seen, even as exuberant buying in index heavyweights helped about 40 stocks out of the S&P CNX Nifty Index's fifty stocks to post gains.

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The occasional bits of selling pressure that was witnessed during Monday's session were just minor blips in an otherwise strongly bullish market.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the Nifty Index rode up at open and quickly breached the 2,470 points mark. After climbing steadily throughout the day, the index closed the session at 2,484 points, a gain of about 29 points or 1.17 per cent compared to the previous week's close.

Amongst the biggest gainers from the Nifty were Grasim, which posted a 4.3 per cent jump at Rs 1,356, IPCL (up 3.5 per cent), GAIL (up 3.2 per cent), Tata Chemicals (up 3.1 per cent), TCS (up 2.8 per cent), Sun Pharma (up 2.7 per cent), Nalco (up 2.4 per cent), Bajaj Auto (up 2.4 per cent), Hindustan Lever, ITC (both up 2.2 per cent), Reliance Industries, Satyam Computers, ONGC, Punjab National Bank and HDFC (all of which were up about 1.5 per cent).

The most active stocks at the NSE were Reliance Industries, Sasken Technologies, Patni Computers, TCS, State Bank of India, Jindal Stainless, GTC Industries and Infosys Technologies. A total of over 37.5 crore shares were traded on Monday at the NSE and total traded value stood at Rs 5,767 crore. A total of 73 stocks hit their price bands at the NSE.

At the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the 30-share Sensitive Index was up over 78 points at 8,138 points, a jump of nearly one per cent, at the close of trade on Monday. After opening on a strong note, the momentum for the Sensex seemed to weaken during early hours. But, the continued strengthening of buying support later during the session helped the index post a new intra-day high of 8,142 points.

Of the Sensex 30, there were a total of 22 that posted gains and the remaining 8 were in negative territory at close on Monday. Traded value of Sensex stocks was Rs 441 crore. Total market capitalization crossed the 2.2 lakh crore mark.

With Monday's close, the BSE Sensex had gained over 51.5 per cent compared to its corresponding year ago close level. The broader BSE 100, BSE 500, BSE Midcap, BSE Small cap and the sectoral BSE PSU, BSE Bankex and BSE IT were seen closing higher the BSE Sensex on heavy institutional buying in all the key counters.

The losers at the BSE on Monday were ACC, HDFC Bank, Cipla, Larsen & Toubro, Maruti Udyog, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Reliance Energy and Tata Motors.

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