The Sensex opened on a cheerful note at 17,500 and touched a high of 17,530 within few minutes of trade tracking positive global cues. The index moved sideways for quite sometime before slipping into the negative terrain owing to weakness in the oil&gas and FMCG stocks.
The Sensex however managed to regain strength on buying in auto and realty stocks. The index finally settled at 17,643, up 50 points and the Nifty settled at 5,233, up 11 points.
The market breadth is positive, out of 2,969 shares traded, 1,504 advanced and 1,318 declined on the BSE.
The BSE midcap and the smallcap indices ended on a flat note at 6,982 and 8,839, respectively.
MTNL and Bajaj Electricals rallied over 8% each on the midcap index. TTK Prestige and Bajaj Hindustan Sugar zoomed 20% each on the smallcap index.
Among the sectoral indices, auto and IT indices led the gainers list, up 1% each on the BSE. While FMCG and oil&gas indices slipped 0.5% each.
Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors added over 3% each on the BSE auto index. Infosys and TCS were up 1% on the IT index.INDEX GAINERS. . .
Mahindra & Mahindra gained 4% at Rs 630. Tata Motors, ICICI Bank and Sterlite Industries were up 2% each on the BSE. The other prominent gainers were DLF, HDFC and Maruti, up 1.5% each.
. . .AND THE LOSERS
ACC and HUL slipped around 2% each to Rs 862 and Rs 255, respectively. The other major losers on the BSE were Bharti Airtel, Cipla, Tata Steel and Hero Honda, down 1% each.