Sensex ends above 15000 as oil dips to $105.46/bbl

02 September 2008

It was a spectacular session for Indian equities; Sensex shot up over 600 points and Nifty jumped 170 points in an intraday trade. Crude played an important role, which strengthened positive feelings among traders. It slipped below USD 106 a barrel during the day, a drop of nearly 8.5% as against previous close. European markets also bounced back sharply after weak opening in initial trade.

Major boost was seen in rate sensitives, infrastructure, oil and technology stocks, which pushed Sensex and Nifty above 15000 and 4500 levels, respectively. All BSE indices ended in green. Sensex closed with a gain of 551.35 or 3.8% at 15,049.86 and Nifty shot up by 155.35 points or 3.57% to settle at 4504. Both indices touched an intraday high of 15,106.15 and 4522.40, a gain of 607.64 points and 173.75 points, respectively.

Laurence Balanco, Asian Technical Research, CLSA believes that the Nifty and the Sensex need to break through the 4600 and 15300 level respectively to resume an uptrend while technical analyst, Rajat Bose says important resistance for Nifty will be at 4,580.

Biggest contributors for this surge were ONGC, Reliance Industries, SBI, DLF, ICICI Bank, L&T, Bharti Airtel, and Reliance Communication.

Crude has hit a low of USD 105.46 a barrel on the NYMEX as Gustav weakened to category 1 storm and does not pose much damage to oil facilities. It was trading at USD 108.13 a barrel, down over USD 7/bbl, at the time of writing market report.

Balanco feels crude might test USD 100 per barrel while UBS says crude will see support at $ 95/bbl if $ 100/bbl breaks.