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Heavy FII buying smothers political uncertainty; Sensex soars 382.06 points, Nifty zooms 84.70 points

Foreign institutional investors played a key role in the free-run of scrips on both the country's major bourses, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange, throughout the week.

The Sensex and the S&P CNX Nifty ended higher in a visibly volatile market during the week ended May 7.

The FIIs were the major players on Monday when the BSE opened on a hopeful note, and immediately set the ball rolling as they went on a rampage, buying shares of all the heavy scrips.

They were aptly supported by the domestic players who joined the bandwagon with a certain amount of speculative buying thus setting the scene for a good week ahead.

The mood was further elated on May 4 when the Election Commission announced the schedule for the next Lok Sabha elections. The news boosted the market sentiment as it cleared the cloud of uncertainty which had cast its shadow on the BSE ever since the fall of the Vajpayee-government. The Sensex zoomed ahead by a whopping 124.55 points, its highest jump in the week.

There was no looking back for the market after that as sustained buying of major scrips by FIIs continued and the Sensex surpassed the psychological barrier of the 3700-mark on Friday, the last day of trading. Marketmen said that the FIIs bought to the tune of Rs 3 billion within the five days of the week.

Mirroring the overall trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex registered a gain of a whopping 382.06 points as it closed at 3707.75 points as compared to its previous close of 3325.69 points, which is one of the highest marks the Sensex has covered.

The broad based BSE-100 index also trod the same route showing commendable gain of 178.77 points to finally end at 1628.41 points as compared to its last week's close of 1449.64 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex were not far behind as they too showed smart gains of 37.33 and 14.75 points respectively to close at 368.63 and 143.56 points. Last week, they had eased to 331.39 and 128.81 points respectively.

Meanwhile, the National Stock Exchange was not left behind in the general hooplah as scrips flared up after a dull start. The opening day was not a good one as the S&P CNX Nifty fell by 7.45 points on selling pressure from marketmen, as the initial hopeful trend of the BSE did not catch on here.

But, the scene change since Tuesday as the mood caught on with FIIs doing major business in the NSE market and the scrips rose considerably and the mood remained upbeat throughout the week.

Domestic players too joined the FIIs to change the face of the NSE after a dull previous week.

The S&P CNX Nifty Index rose by 84.70 points to 1062.90 points as compared to its previous week's close of 978.20 points. The S&P CNX Nifty Junior also gained smartly this week and ended at 1919.65, registering a rise of 110.65 points as compared to last week's close of 1809.00 points.

The S&P CNX 500 and CNX Midcap 200 registered respective uptrends of 56.50 and 28.79 points to end at 737.10 and 638.68 points this week from the last week's close of 678.81 and 609.89 points respectively.

Scrips of BHEL, Satyam, Telco and Dr Reddy's were upbeat this week as heavy buying was witnessed at their counter. Cadbury and Reliance, on the other hand, showed some losses in their scrips due to sustained interest of the buyers.

UNI

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