The Hindu Business Line : Oil, gas index dips; banks register good gains

After the benchmark indices crested historic highs almost everyday of the week, Wednesday's session, too, witnessed a late morning surge in buying support that took the market indicators to a new all-time high.

However, the market's final statistics for this mid-week session does not adequately capture the high levels of volatility that was registered intra-day. The markets opened on a strong note, but almost immediately nervousness and hesitancy at these high levels kicked in leading to a sell-off amongst the key index heavyweights.

General Market Trend

Later, after plummeting to much below the previous day's close levels, both the benchmark BSE Sensex and the S&P CNX Nifty Index were pulled out of the red by succeeding bouts of investment buying by institutional investors. This surge in buying support helped both the indices post new highs. The indices stayed at these high levels — 3,880 points for the Nifty and 13,500 points for the BSE Sensex — for about an hour of trading during late afternoon.

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But, profit booking set in during the last hour of trade and the indices quickly slid down to levels that were closer to the previous day's close. Finally, the markets closed with a gain of about 0.3 per cent.

Sectoral Performers

The positive sentiment at close was also prevalent amongst stocks outside of the frontline index stocks. So, though the less representative BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were seen closing marginally lower on Wednesday, the other broad market indices such as the BSE-100 and the BSE-500 were all up. Similarly, the other NSE indices such as the CNX Nifty Junior, Bank Nifty and the CNX 100 had registered gains.

The only sectoral index that posted a considerable fall on Wednesday was the BSE Oil and Gas index that shed almost a percentage point. The big losers from this index were Reliance Industries, Reliance Natural Resources, HPCL, GAIL, Essar Oil, BPCL and Aban Offshore.

However, unlike some of the stocks from the energy industry, public sector undertakings from other sectors were not targeted for profit booking. BHEL, Bongaigaon Refinery, Engineers India, IBP, MTNL and Nalco were some of the PSU stocks that posted gains on Wednesday, enabling the BSE PSU index to gain 0.8 per cent.

The other sectoral index that gained the most from the good performance of its constituents was the BSE Bankex, index of banking sector stocks. The BSE Bankex moved up nearly 2.9 per cent. The most prominent gainers were Bank of India, Kotak Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank, Andhra Bank and Vijaya Bank. The only two losers from this set were Centurion Bank of Punjab and UTI Bank.

Some of the prominent losers from the Sensex were Dr Reddy's Laboratories, HLL, HDFC, NTPC, Satyam Computer, Tata Motors and Tata Steel.