Mumbai: A sudden spurt of buying towards the
fag end of trading, sparked by the government's decision on Thursday
to divest 10 per cent in all listed companies, pushed the
benchmark Sensex up by more than 150 points to regain the
16,000-level after three days.
Markets turned bearish in early trade after yesterday's
rebound rally on weak cues from Asia and plunged to 15,564
points. Sentiment, however, turned bullish within minutes of
Home Minister P Chidambaram announcing the Cabinet decision to
divest 10 per cent stake in all listed companies. Government
also decided to list all profit-making public sector firms
with a positive net worth.
After a roller-coaster ride, which saw the Sensex
swinging over 500 points, the 30-share index finally closed
the day at 16,063.90, netting a rise of 151.77 points or 0.95
per cent over its previous close.
Small-cap and mid-cap stocks attracted brisk buying with
their indices rising by 1.82 per cent and 2.02 per cent.
Shares of the telecom companies were flavour of the day.
Brokers said reports of government planning to reduce licence
fee for telcos attracted heavy buying in these stocks. Sensex
stocks Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel posted
impressive gains of 5.34 and 4.50 per cent respectively.
"The market is in a pull-back mode as it has witnessed
vertical sell off in the earlier sessions. It is more of a
bounce back kind of a trend. The long term uptrend is still
intact and investors should put in money in the index stocks
at every lows," said Kotak Securities Vice President Technical
Research Shrikant Chouhan.
Sensex jumped despite weak Asian indices following Wall
Street closing lower overnight. US Fed Reserve yesterday
projected a mute recovery in the largest economy which saw the
dollar recovering and stocks sliding.
Weak sentiment was reflected in Asia with the Nikkei
closing down 1.29 per cent and the Kospi 1.75 per cent.
European markets too were down by about 0.50 per cent in their
morning trading.
Discarding global trends, broader 50-share Nifty of the
National Stock Exchange also firmed up by 54.75 points or 1.16
per cent to close at 4,765.55.
Kotak's Chouhan said as the rupee starts appreciating and
with no major bad news on the global front liquidity would
pour into the market again.
Reliance Infra ended the day as the biggest gainer among
Sensex stocks at 5.59 per cent. Aluminum major Hindalco was
big winner at 5.08 per cent. Auto major Mah&Mah at 3.56 per
cent, Tata Steel at 3.28 per cent, BHEL at 2.47 per cent, Hero
Honda at 2.31 per cent were the other prominent winners.
India's largest public sector bank SBI, however, lost
1.14 per cent
Market breadth remained strong with 1,827 gainers against
841 losers following widespread advances in the mid-cap and
small-cap segments.
The trading volume was high at Rs 5,972.13 crore compared
to Rs 5,142.75 crore on Wednesday. Infosys Technologies was
the most active share with highest turnover of Rs 485.78
crore.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, November 05, 2009, 18:23