COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Cement and infotech stocks spark rally; Sensex spurts 117 points to 4644

Buying support extended by foreign institutional investors and domestic operators in select equities belonging to infotech, pharma and cement sectors led the Sensex to cross the psychological level of 4,600, lifting it by 117 points today.

Mirroring the uptrend, the BSE-30 Sensitive Index opened at 4548.75, witnessed the day's high of 4644.20 and a low of 4548.75 and ended 116.77 points or 2. 58 per cent higher at 4644.07.

Marketmen said that strong performance of cement companies during the first quarter coupled with the market's fancy for infotech stocks allowed good buying in shares of these industries.

ACC ended Rs 13 higher at Rs 225, Grasim Rs 15 higher at Rs 320, Satyam Computers Rs 57 points higher at Rs 1,882, Pentafour Software Rs 90 higher at Rs 1,380, Telco Rs 11 higher at Rs 248, Tisco at Rs 138, gaining Rs 5.

Hindustan Lever ended Rs 21 higher at Rs 2,730.

The domestic institutions bought earlier in the day, but booked profits during the later part, brokers said.

The BSE-100 index rose by 51.19 points to end at 2036.43 as against the last closing of 1985.24.

The BSE-200 index ended 11.40 points higher at 463.28, while the Dollex ended 4.46 points higher at 177.89.

The total turnover on the BOLT network was Rs 26.18 billion from trading in 80.1 million shares.

Pentafour Software topped the turnover list with Rs 4.04 billion, followed by Satyam (Rs 3.15 billion) and L&T (Rs 1.56 billion).

Other stocks that recorded a high turnover were Ranbaxy Labs, Zee Telefilms, ACC, Digital, Telco, Reliance, SBI, ITC, Infosys, MTNL, M&M and Tata Tea.

UNI

Business news