IT and consumer durables help market recover

With Dow Jones and majority of Asian indices (Nikkei, Hang Seng etc) down, the Indian stock market opened weak at the opening bell. The market slid further as the day rolled and the bellwether Sensex touched the day's low of 15423, down 206 points, within an hour of the opening bell. However by afternoon the index recovered and entered the positive zone on buying at lower levels especially in information technology (IT) and consumers durable stocks. The intra-day high for the benchmark was 15735. Among IT scrips, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies attracted investor interest. The Sensex finally settled at 15688, up 60 points and Nifty closed at 4659, up 17 points. The market breadth was positive with the gainers outnumbering the losers by 1.57:1. In absolute terms of the 2,816 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,681 stocks advanced, 1,060 stocks declined and 75 stocks ended unchanged. Among sectoral indices the BSE IT went up by 1.92%, BSE CD rose 1.80% and BSE Oil moved up by 1.13%. Barring a few all the Sensex stocks ended higher. Tata Motors flared up 7.10% to Rs490.25, Wipro bounced back sharply and shot up by 3.86% to Rs544.50, Reliance Industries zoomed 2.51% to Rs2,023.75, Reliance Communications moved up 2.22% to Rs262.25, Grasim Industries scaled up 2.04% to Rs2,666.15, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) surged 1.69% to Rs210.40, TCS jumped by 1.52% to Rs528.50 and Larsen & Toubro gained 1.48% to trade at Rs1,573.60. State Bank of India led the chart of laggards by falling 2.36% to quote at Rs1,747.35, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) lost 1.76% to quote Rs2,302.40, Bharti Airtel declined 1.62% to Rs413.95, ICICI Bank moved down by 1.07% to trade at Rs759.40 and ONGC lost 1% to quote Rs1,183.45. Over 1.97 crore shares of Mahindra Satyam changed hands on the BSE followed by Suzlon Energy (1.84 crore shares), Spicejet (1.61 crore shares), Firstsource Solutions (1.36 crore shares) and Unitech (1.23 crore shares).