Metal keeps market upbeat

Market comes off its high, but still ends firm above 12100 mark on metal and consumer durable stocks.

The market displayed a positive trend almost for the entire session. Taking cue from firm US indices, the Sensex opened 112 points higher at 12065 and

continued to rally to touch the day's high of 12144 on buying in metal and consumer durable (CD) stocks. Thereafter, the market remained range-bound with a positive bias. However, profit booking in some of the front-line stocks dragged the market to an intra-day low of 11981. The Sensex bounced back towards the close, as short covering in heavyweights helped the index to recover and end the session at 12117, up 164 points. Nifty finally settled at 3684, up 59 points. 
The market breadth was positive. Of the 2,616 stocks traded on BSE, 1,696 stocks advanced, whereas 828 stocks declined. Ninety two stocks ended unchanged. Among sectoral indices, the BSE Metal notched up by 8.22% followed by the BSE CD (up 3.72%) and the BSE Realty (up 1.90%). The remaining indices gained 1-2% each, except the BSE FMCG which had a negative run today. Almost all the 15 scrips of the BSE Metal posted good gains for the day 
The heavyweights witnessed strong buying interest. Sterlite Industries soared 13.78% at Rs517.45, Hindalco Industries rose by 11.25% at Rs70.20, Tata Steel was up 8.76% at Rs294.35, Wipro shot up by 5.80% at Rs380.05, HDFC jumped 3.86% at Rs1,816, Maruti Suzuki India added 3.72% at Rs839.30, State Bank of India gained 3.27% at Rs1,366.95, Tata Motors moved up by 3.05% at Rs272.10 and Bharti Airtel was up 2.92% at Rs778.20. However, Mahindra & Mahindra slipped 2.93% at Rs516.35 and ACC lost 2.44% at Rs624.70. While Hindustan Unilever, Grasim Industries, National Thermal Power Corporation, ITC, Infosys Technologies, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, Tata Consultancy Services and DLF closed in negative territory.
Over 5.24 crore shares of Cals Refineries changed hands on the BSE followed by Ispat Industries (3.16 crore shares), Unitech (1.68 crore shares), Birla Power (1.31 crore shares) and Suzlon Energy (1.21 crore shares).