The Reserve Bank of India's move to lower the cash reserve ratio in an effort to get more money from banks to borrowers seems to have enthused investors. The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty ended the week higher by 3 per cent each. Even Europe's debt woes did not put a spoke in investor sentiments as five more Euro Zone countries were downgraded. The broader BSE 500 gained 3.3 per cent.

Strides Arcolabs took the pole position as the top gainer of the week, with the stock up 30 per cent. It gained in anticipation of paring debt levels using the proceeds from selling its Australian and South-East Asian operations.

The Government's decision to institute an expert committee to look into deregulating sugar prices sent the markets into a frenzy. The stocks of Shree Renuka Sugars, Bajaj Hindusthan, Balrampur Chini and Triveni Engineering gained between 13 and 23 per cent.

The stock of Essar Oil gained just under 20 per cent during the week as the company announced that it had discovered significant reserves of gas in its coal fields in West Bengal. This seemed to assuage investor concerns related to a whooping Rs 8000 crore sales tax bill presented to the company earlier.

Over the last three weeks, Suzlon Energy has released a series of announcements on orders bagged. This helped the scrip gain about 16 per cent this week.

The stock of SREI Infrastructure Finance too was up 16 per cent on optimism over its plans to raise Rs 2500 crore for an infrastructure equity fund.

As optimism builds over SAIL 's capacity additions and a strengthening rupee easing input costs pressure, the stock gained 15 per cent over the last week.

A better-than-expected set of operational results came to the rescue of Sesa Goa whose share price gained 14 per cent.

Telecom companies too were notable gainers through the week as the stock of Idea Cellular gained over 12 per cent on a good set of good quarterly results.

Inking a pact with Uninor for leasing bandwith for national long-distance services galvanised investor hopes for Tata Teleservices , whose stock ended the week with a 12 per cent gain.

Gaining a six-month extension on the requirement to dilute its stake in the Multi- Commodity Exchange of India helped the stock of parent company Financial Technologies to notch up a return of 12 per cent for the previous week.

Emerging as the lowest bidder for a Rs 1800-crore road project in Himachal Pradesh helped the stock of IL&FS TransportationNetworks end the week up 12 per cent.

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