Nifty up 8 per cent in July, ends above 4600; auto, realty, IT zoom

The Sensex witnessed huge buying interest on the first day of August series and closed July month on a strong note. It touched a new 2009 high of 15,732.81 on the back of strong earnings and the Nifty ended above the 4600 level. Upsurge in oil & gas exploration, banking, FMCG, capital goods, metal and select pharma companies' shares supported the markets throughout the session.

The indices saw some blip around 14-15 hours IST due to realty stocks, Bharti Airtel, TCS, Reliance Communication, Hero Honda, SAIL, BPCL and Unitech. But in the last one hour of the trade, they gained more strength again. The 30-share BSE Sensex surged 282.35 points or 1.83%, to settle at 15,670.31. The 50-share NSE Nifty shut shop at 4636.45, up 1.42% or 65 points over previous close, after seeing a day's high of 4669.75.

Both the indices gained 8% each for the month and up 2% each for the week. The BSE Auto, Realty, FMCG and IT were the strong sectors this month, their indices were up 25%, 22%, 21% and 20%, respectively. The Nifty August futures closed with 17 points premium (provisional figures).

ONGC and SBI were the star performers of the day, both surged 5-6% on the back of institutional buying. Deven Choksey of KR Choksey Securities said the market looked little bit promising and some of the heavyweights started taking up the positions in the market and that included Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). "Some of the long only foreign institutional investors (FII) funds, who have started acting into the market, have started allotting funds to some of these large size market companies where the growth is now looking little bit more certain. That is where we are seeing the kind of buying also emerging from that side," he said.

SBI Q1 numbers were good on Thursday posted 42% jump in net profit. He added, "We are expecting that the market having gone up to 4,660 on the Nifty, probably may make some small correction. But thereafter probably it would go up because of higher allocation of funds and largely towards some of the heavyweight counters including those of banks like State Bank of India. So from that perspective, we are seeing the kind of buying continuing in coming days. Maybe we should be having some kind of profit booking in the beginning of the next week but thereafter one should see an upside continuing in the market."

Hindalco Industries surged 6.65% as the company's bottomline numbers were above the estimates though it was down 31% at Rs 480 crore versus Rs 696.8 crore, YoY. The markets expected around Rs 226 crore.