Sensex Rallies 3.7%

Ivaylo
08 Mar, 2007
New York City

The market opened with an upward bias and rallied more than 500 points on strong cement, banking, construction and telecom shares. Upbeat global markets also supported the benchmark index. Hindustan Lever led the rally, together with Gujarat Ambuja and BHEL. There were no decliners of the Sensex stocks. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today stated the economy was expected to grow by over 9% during 2006-07.

[R]8:00AM NY-7:00PM Mumbai Sensex spurts Thursday on buying in large-caps.[/R]
The Sensex finished 469.60 points, or 3.73%, higher at 13,049.35. The market-breadth was strong as there were more two gainers for every decliner. For 1,748 stocks that advanced, 776 declined and only 57 stocks were unchanged. Of the 30 stocks in the Sensex, there were no decliners. The turnover on NSE was Rs 7,954.06 crore, compared with Rs 8,881.84 crore on Wednesday.

Economic news

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that more public sector units should be listed in the stock exchanges. He added that the government would everything possible to help build stronger public sector and give it full managerial and financial autonomy. He also said that the economy was expected to grow by over 9% during 2006-07. He announced that the government was ready to change the approach to SEZs and added that land acquisition and resettlement has to be done in a humane manner.

State Bank of India, the largest commercial bank in the country, will announce 50-100 basis points rise in lending rates this month in the wake of the recent 75 basis points increase in the prime lending rate.

Trading highlights

Reliance Industries was the most-active stock with a turnover of Rs 199.70 crore followed by Indus Fila and MindTree.

Advancers

Hindustan Lever jumped nearly 9.5% to Rs 183.8, BHEL rallied 8% to Rs 2,175.5 and Gujarat Ambuja soared 8.4% to Rs 112.9. Other strong performers included HDFC Bank spurting 6.2% to Rs 972.3, Ranbaxy surged 6.2% to Rs 328.8, Dr Reddy’s Lab rose 6.7% to Rs 677, Grasim advanced 6.2% to Rs 2,235.2 and L&T rose 4.6% to Rs 1,521.1.

Telecom stocks kept their momentum and gained for the second straight day on the eve of the listing of Idea Cellular on Friday on March 9 2007. Reliance Communications surged 5.6% to Rs 434.1, and Bharti Airtel gained 4.8% to Rs 757.5. Idea Cellular is to listed on the bourses on Friday, March 9 2007 and had priced its IPO at the upper end of Rs 65 - Rs 75 price band on a strong response to the issue.

Index heavy Reliance Industries advanced 3.6% to Rs 1,335 and IPCL jumped 11.8% to Rs 259. Reliance said that its board will meet on March 10 2007 to consider a proposal for merging subsidiary, IPCL, with the company.

Steel stocks rebounded on intense buying on firm global steel prices. SAIL jumped 15% to Rs 107, and JSW Steel rose 8% to Rs 447.70. Tata Steel advanced nearly 4% to Rs 428.90. Shareholders of the Corus Group have agreed to Tata Steel $12 billion takeover of the European steelmaker. SBI, Wipro and Satyam ended with gains of around 3.5% each at Rs 1,000, Rs 577, Rs 446, respectively.

Decliners

There were no decliners of the 30 stocks in the Sensex.