The Hindu Business Line : Weekly Market round-up

On Tuesday, the BSE gained 346.02 points, or 2.19 per cent, to close at 16,153.66 - its highest close in two weeks. Infosys Technologies rose 6.2 per cent on a good medium-term outlook with increased dividend pay-out.

The BSE IT index moved up 5.5 per cent, registering the maximum gain among the sectoral indices.

Turnover jumped sharply in the F&O segment on the NSE on Tuesday to Rs 46,369 crore against Friday's figure of Rs 41,003.92 crore.

About 19 per cent of open interest positions was rolled over to the next month's series.

The active counters in derivative segment were Reliance Petroleum, Infosys Technologies, Orchid Chemicals, RNRL, Essar Oil and Reliance Capital.

Reliance Industries hogged the limelight among the F&O segment.

Foreign institutional investors remained net buyers to the tune of Rs 1,709.75 crore, mainly on the back heavy buying in index futures.

However, they were net sellers to the tune of Rs 56.52 crore in the cash segment, according to the provisional data provided by the NSE.

The Orchid counter saw heavy activity on Tuesday on both the BSE and NSE, as talks of a further stake buy by Solrex in the company started doing the rounds.

The surge in stock price seemed to be due to the speculation that Solrex might buy more stake in Orchid Chemicals.

Investors took new positions as Solrex was likely to go in for an open offer, if it crossed the 15 per cent stake limit.

Wednesday again belonged to Infosys and Reliance.

Infosys gained 5.9 per cent to close at Rs 1,699.95, its highest close since Feb. 27.

The BSE index ended at 16,244.19, up 90.53 points.

Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd gained 5 per cent to Rs 999.85 after its quarterly net profit rose 52.5 per cent.

HCL Technologies Ltd gained 6 per cent to Rs 260.05 after company posted a 3 per cent rise in profit, but maintained a full year outlook for revenue growth of 30 per cent.

Weak results pulled down Power Finance Corporation and it closed down by 5.3 per cent at Rs 155.10 after its fourth quarter net profit fell to 19.3 per cent.

SEBI decided to allow mutual funds to sell government securities contracted for purchase without taking delivery, in accordance with the guidelines issued by the RBI.

To facilitate short selling of securities by retail and institutional investors, the Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday signed an agreement with its clearing house - Bank of India Shareholding Ltd.

The agreement aims to facilitate the Securities Lending and Borrowing Scheme, which starts from April 21.

On Thursday the markets opened on a positive note taking strong global cues and traded in a range to finally close on a healthy note.

The Sensex ended 237.01 points higher at 16,481.20. The Nifty gained 71.1 to close at 4958.40.

Midcap and Smallcap indices were the star performers in todays market activity and gained 2.05 per cent and 2.16 per cent respectively.

The market breadth was positive with the advance decline ratio close to 3:1 on the BSE.

Barring Oil & Gas and FMCG indices, all the BSE Sectoral indices ended with healthy gains.

The BSE Realty, Metal, IT and Bankex surged in excess of 3 per cent.

Gainers from the index pivotals included HDFC Bank, Hindalco, HDFC, DLF, Infosys and Tata Steel.

Losers included Hindustan Unilever, ACC, L&T, Reliance Energy and Reliance.

Taking cues from Met with near-normal monsoon prediction this year, fertiliser shares rallied. Chambal Fertilisers surged 23.11 per cent to Rs 70.05 and was the top gainer.

Nagarjuna Fertilisers spurted 12.91 per cent to close at 46.80.

The Reserve Bank of India on Thursday hiked the cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points or 0.5 percentage point to eight per cent to contain inflation.

The Markets were closed on Friday due to Mahavir Jayanti

Compiled by B.L. Sudarsan ; Podcast by Lourdes Kamalini

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