Sensex ends 230 points higher on global cues, short covering

The benchmark Nifty saw a huge buying interest today on the back of positive global cues and short covering. It closed above the 4800 mark for the first time in the last six sessions. Buying across all the sectors helped the Sensex to close with more than 200 points rally.

A lot of put writing at Nifty 4800 and in the money 4900 puts brought bullish sentiment in the benchmark indices today, upmove in commodities in the international markets also helped. The Nifty February future closed with 5 points premium.

Deven Choksey of KR Choksey Securities said some important things were happening on the derivative side of the market today. "The discount in the Nifty futures has turned positive. More amount of put writing has been seen and that too at a strike price of 4,800 which gives a kind of rise to the thinking that there is going to be enough amount of upside in the market going forward."

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 16,152.59, up 230.42 points or 1.45% and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 69.65 points or 1.46% to 4826.85. Indices gained 1.4% this week. The benchmark indices outperformed the broader indices; the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices gained 0.8% each.

Global cues remained positive today on hopes of likely bailout plan for Greece. Among the Asian markets, Hang Seng and Kospi went up 1.8% each. Straits Times was up 0.7% and Jakarta was up 1%. Shanghai was up just 0.1%. Taiwanese and Japanese were shut today.

European markets were trading 0.4-1.1% higher and the US index futures were up 0.5% each, at the time of closing of Indian equities.