The Hindu Business Line : Auto, metal stocks shine; FMCG, oil stocks dip

However, the final-hour support from the bulls placed the Sensex in the new orbit at the close of the trade with a gain of 164.94 points to end the day at 14,643.13. The trading fails to be secular with maximum support came from 17 stocks in the Sensex and the breadth of the market in the small and mid-cap sectors were not encouraging.

The broader markets Nifty gained 28 points to its overnight tally. Except FMCG and oil and gas, rest of the sectors fared well with IT, metals, auto and banks gained the most. Advances to declines ratio fail to throw any direction for the markets with 1,341 stocks gained against 1,347 declined.

New listing

The real estate developer Akruti Nirman made its debut on the bourses on Wednesday. The stock opened at Rs 701 and went on to touch Rs 729 on the BSE. The stock ended the day at Rs 564 with a volume of 76.53 lakh shares.

Buzzing Stocks

Bharat Electronics that surged by 10.9 per cent led the rally with equal support coming from the frontline auto stocks Bajaj Auto and it surged by Rs 254.8 to Rs 3,080.3. Other prominent gainers were IndusInd Bank, BEML, i-gate Global Solutions, Mastek, Hindalco and Grasim.

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Punjab Tractors rose on back of news floating in the market that Mahindra and Mahindra has bid to buy stake in the tractor maker and the deal likely to over by the month-end. The stock spiked 8.7 per cent to close at Rs 308.2.

Sector Focus

The BSE sectoral index IT was the major gainer. Financial Technologies gained the most and it added Rs 131.9 to Rs 1, 924. Others to end in green were Infosys Technologies, HCL Technologies and TCS. The stocks that bucked the trend to close in negative were Patni Computer, which shed 4.9 per cent, Satyam Computer and MphasiS.

Auto sector drove in the forward gear after couple of companies announced the better sales numbers. Bajaj Auto led the sector with Hero Honda and Hindustan Motor followed the trend. Ashok Leyland, TVS Motors and Apollo Tyres moved in opposite direction.

Metals shined on Wednesday after a lull yesterday. SAIL gained the most with 5.1 per cent to Rs 116.2, Hindalco, Sterlite Industries and Jindal Steel were the other stocks to close in green. The unlucky ones were Sesa Goa and Tata Steel.

It was a mixed bag in the banking space, ICICI Bank, which hiked the lending rate to housing sector, came under the scanner of the market participants, the stock gained along with HDFC Bank, UTI Bank, Canara Bank and Centurion Bank of Punjab.

Stock Specific Action

Ranbaxy Laboratories has announced the signing of a global development & marketing agreement with Zenotech Laboratories for its first bio similar product-CSF (filgrastim). The news fail to cheer stock it closed flat at Rs 418.3.

Gainers and Losers

Aditya Birla Nuvo, Aftek, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, VSNL, L&T, Reliance Capital and Lupin were among the prominent gainers in Nifty. BPCL, ONGC, HPCL, Tata Motors and Tata Powers were among the losers.