The Hindu Business Line : IT, sugar stocks guide Sensex rally

THE bulls stampeded their way through Dalal Street, and dismissing in their wake weak trading trends in the early part of the week. The Sensex gain of 212 points was the highest single-day gain in close to four months. Within the Sensex, all but one stock - that of HDFC Bank - ended in the black.

Advancing stocks outpaced those that declined by a factor of seven to one, indicating the breadth of the rally. Small-cap stocks yet again outpaced their counterparts in the large- and mid-cap space. In event specific action:

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The market response to the acquisition of Air Sahara by Jet Airways was lukewarm with the latter gaining less than 2 per cent. Concerns about the price appear to have driven the tempered response.

Tamil Nadu Newsprint was marked up on news flow that it would become entitled to carbon credits.

Prime Securities was marked up on approval of a buyback plan.

The bullish undertone in Hindustan Zinc was maintained by an impressive earnings card.

IT stocks were in the limelight with the CNX IT Index gaining about 3.7 per cent. The announcement of a big-ticket long-term contract by HCL Technologies and the spurt in Wipro were the highlights on a day when declines in this space were hard to spot. Stocks in the metal space also sported big gains while banking sector stocks were relatively subdued.

Sugar stocks have never had it so good. The list of big gainers for the day was dominated by a host of well-known names; stocks of several smaller players such as Gayatri Sugars, Rana Sugars, and Oudh Sugar, to name a few also had a field day. Ugar Sugar Works was the exception, as it declined on the back of massive volumes.

After a lull of a few weeks, engineering and construction sector stocks were back in the fancy with a big bang. The likes of Siemens India, ABB, BHEL and Larsen & Toubro were in the forefront of the uptrend. PBA Infrastructure was up 20 per cent.

Prominent gainers were MM Forgings, Mercator Lines, Saregama, Cupid, Punjab Chemicals, Reliance Industrial Infrastructure, Gabriel India, India Cements, Bata India, Bharti Tele-Ventures and Ricoh. Stocks that shed value included Nicholas Piramal, Procter & Gamble, IPCA Labs, Nandan Exim and Alembic.