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Heavy FII buying sustains rally; Sensex soars 367.72, Nifty zooms 102.45 points

Equities staged an unprecedened rally at the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange, The country's leading bourses, following huge buying by foreign institutional investors in the fundamentally strong counters during the week ended May 14.

The 30-scrip BSE Sensitive Index, benchmark of the BSE, surpassed the psychological barrier of 4,000 points and touched the year's high while the broad-based national index of the BSE too crossed the 1,700 mark in this week.

The S&P CNX Nifty also performed well and crossed the 1,100 level at the NSE.

The Sensex crossed the important mark of 4,000 points on May 13 when it skyrocketted by 138 points to close at 4014.69 points. It was on May 8 last year the Sensex had jumped to a height of 4022.28 points.

Reflectintg the bullish phase, the Sensex gained by 367.72 points at 4075.47 points from the previous week's close of 3707.75 while the broad-based BSE-100 index shot up by 120.92 points to 1749.33 points as against the last week's finish of 1628.41points.

The S&P CNX Nifty index zoomed by 102.45 points to 1165.35 points from the previous week's close of 1062.90 points.

The market was totally driven by the FIIs in the current spell which witnessed a third major rally of 830-odd points in the history of the stock markets. The FIIs pumped in more than Rs 12 billion during less than a fortnight after the dissolution of Lok Sabha.

Index heavyweights ACC, Hindustan Lever have emerged as major gainers while for the first time, it was seen that the FIIs diverted their attention on commodity stocks from the current market favourites infotech, pharma and and FMCG.

Analysts and fund-managers have expressed hope of continuous uptrend in the coming days and the Sensex is likely to break the next crucial mark of 4,150 immediately. They are also positive of Sensex crossing the 4600 level in the near future.

Business volume on both the BSE and the NSE were high with the average daily turnover on the BSE works out at Rs 19.02 billion and Rs 22.29 billion during the week.

The Sensex which was quoted at 3245.27 points on April 26, continued its upward march till May 14 and reported a heavy gain of 830.20 points at 4075.47 points in about 14 trading sessions during this period.

The market witnessed two such rallies only in the boom period of 1992 when the stock market was driven only by scamsters. This time it was on total support of FIIs.

The outstanding position was quoted below Rs 10 billion during the week. Analysts have pointed out that this figure is very less in such a boom period only because the speculators are still away from the market.

The Sensex opened account with the gain of 112 points on Monday, continued its upward march throughout the week, barring a minor correction of 23 points on Wednesday.

Similarly, the S&P CNX Nifty did well barring Wednesday.

Shares related to the paper, entertainment, telecom, refinery, finance , automobile, petrochem, bank, cycles and accessories, shipping and cement sectors registered handsome gains during the week on FII buying support, dealers said.

Among the issues, ACC gained handsomely by Rs 386.25 to Rs 1985, Arvind Mills Rs 1.15 to Rs 28.50, Bajaj Auto Rs 9.50 to Rs 575, BHEL Rs 5.75 to Rs 209.90, BSES Limited Rs 21.50 to Rs 172, GE Shipping Rs 2 to Rs 22, Glaxo Rs 13 to Rs 730, Grasim Rs 36.45 to Rs 185, Gujarat Ambuja Cement Rs 12.10 to Rs 319, Hindustan Lever Rs 258.50 to Rs 2285, ICICI Rs 6.70 to Rs 66.50, IDBI Rs 3.80 to Rs 35.80, IPCL Rs 6.35 to Rs 102.05, ITC Rs 24 to Rs 1118, L&T Rs 40 to Rs 279, Mahindra and Mahindra, Rs 12.50 to Rs 257.50, MTNL Rs 27.60 to Rs 195.50, Nestle rs 33.90 to Rs 546, Ranbaxy Rs 43 to Rs 723, Reliance Rs 31.30 to Rs 184, SBI Rs 38 to Rs 229, Tata Chemicals Rs 10 to Rs 70, Tata Power Rs 13.95 to Rs 79.35, Tisco Rs 20.95 to Rs 120.05

The domestic institutional investors remained sellers through out the week while the mutual funds made moderate purchases in select counters, market sources said.

Total turnover on the BSE reported during the week was Rs 95.12 billion while at the NSE, it was Rs 131.48 billion.

Among the others indices, the BSE-200 and Dollex gained by 26.32 and 10.22 points at 394.95 and 153.78 points from the previous week's close of 368.63 and 143.56 points respectively.

At the NSE, the S&P CNX Nifty Junior shot up by 73.10 points to 1992.75 points. The CNX Defty rose by 82.75 points to 944.55 points from the previous close of 861.75.

The CNX-500 and Midcap-200 ended higher by 51.15 and 34.42 points to 788.25 and 673.10 points as against the last week's close of 737.10 and 638.68 points respectively.

UNI

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