Sensex up for 4th consecutive day, ends with marginal gains

The Nifty closed marginally higher and continued its uptrend for the fourth consecutive session. Technology, pharma, power and heavyweights like Reliance Industries, L&T, Reliance Communication, Tata Motors and Grasim helped the index to close above the 4650 level. The equity benchmarks witnessed volatility throughout the session as selling continued in heavyweights like SBI, ONGC, Bharti, BHEL, SAIL and ICICI Bank.

Both the indices started the trade on a weak note following negative Asian cues and as the day proceeded the Sensex lost over 200 points due to 5.5% fall in China's Shanghai. There were reports that China might raise fuel prices by 4-8%, as the current crude prices were around USD 74-75 a barrel. But around 12 hours IST, as the Shanghai recovered the Indian indices also bounced back and traded marginally in the green with some volatility.

In the Asia, Shanghai recovered 3.26% from the day's low and ended 2.59% lower. Hang Seng, Nikkei, Kospi and Taiwan Weighted fell 0.4-0.8% while Straits Times and Jakarta gained 0.2% each. At the time of closing of Indian equities, European markets were trading marginally weak after seeing significant recovery from the day's low and the US index futures were flat in trade.

The 30-share BSE Sensex ended at 15,688.47, up 59.72 points or 0.38% over previous close, after seeing recovery of 265 points from the intraday low of 15,423.39. The 50-share NSE Nifty went up 0.36% or 16.55 points, to settle at 4659.35; it recovered nearly 77 points from day's low of 4582.50.

Volumes were on the higher side ahead of F&O expiry on Thursday. Total traded turnover was at Rs 1,12,516.14 crore as against Rs 96,614.47 crore on Monday. This included Rs 17,861.56 crore from the NSE cash segment, Rs 88,341.26 crore from the NSE F&O and the balance Rs 6,313.32 crore from the BSE cash segment.

The broader indices outperformed the benchmark indices; the BSE Midcap Index was up 0.6% and the Smallcap Index up 1.5%. Dipan Mehta, Member- BSE & NSE said the Index was rangebound, but there was a lot of action in small & midcap stocks. "More midcap stocks are still underperforming the broader markets if you analyze it at a twelve month period", he said.