Sensex comes into positive territory
Mumbai: The benchmark 30-share Sensex continued to rise for the third consecutive day gaining 24 points on Tuesday among meager trading. The markets traded in the negative zone for most part of the Tuesday before finally closing in the positive territory on the back of fund buying in select blue-chip stocks. The BSE Sensex on Tuesday opened firm at 4,960.87 points but lost momentum within an hour of trading and touched an intra-day low of 4,891.86 points in the afternoon trading. By late afternoon fund buying in select blue-chip stocks enabled it to recover by 71 points from the day's low and the Sensex finally finished at 4,962.63 points, up 24.48 points.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the S&P CNX
Nifty closed at 1,550.55, a gain of 8 points. Stock prices moved in a range despite strong overnight gains in the US markets and strong gains witnessed in most Asian markets on the hopes of easing oil prices and faster economic recovery. The big gainers amongst Sensex stocks were Zee Telefilms (up over 4 per cent), Reliance Energy (up over 4.2 per cent), Bharti TeleVentures (up 3.8 per cent), Maruti Udyog (up over 3.4 per cent), Tata Motors (up over 2.8 per cent), Hero Honda Motors and Reliance Industries (both up over 2.5 per cent) and HDFC Bank and ACC were both up over 1.5 per cent.

The other gainers from the list of Sensex stocks were Gujarat Ambuja Cements, BHEL, Cipla, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Wipro, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Ranbaxy Laboratories and ITC Ltd. Amongst the losers were software major Infosys Technologies, FMCG giant Hindustan Lever, Tata Iron and Steel, Satyam Computers, Grasim Industries, Tata Power, State Bank of India, ONGC, HPCL and Hindalco. Amongst major gainers in the PSU index of public sector undertakings were Indian Oil Corporation, GAIL India, BPCL, National Aluminium, Shipping Corporation, Bank of Baroda, Kochi Refinery, Oriental Bank, National Fertiliser, Chennai Petroleum, Vijaya Bank and Indian Overseas Bank. Amongst the other banking sector stocks that were in the limelight on were UTI Bank, HDFC Bank, Canara Bank and J&K Bank. Among tech stocks - Infosys, Moser Baer, HCL Technologies, MphasiS BFL, NIIT, Mastek and e-Serve International pulled down the BSE Tech index.
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Bio-tech stocks up
Mumbai: The bio-tech segment is soon becoming the "best bet" in an otherwise volatile market. Biocon, Jupiter Biosciences and Panacea Biotec witnessed heavy investment-based buying on Tuesday on the back of rumours that that the benefits provided by the government to the software sector is likely to be extended to the bio-tech sector also. Biocon in particular witnessed broad-based institutional buying. The buzz on the street was that a domestic brokerage and couple of foreign broking houses have come out with a buy call on the stock with a price target of Rs1,000.

The stock of Biocon ended at Rs492.85, up 2.44 per cent with around 5.05 lakh shares traded on the BSE. On the NSE, the stock ended at Rs492.65, up 2.36 per cent with around 11.49 lakh shares traded. Panacea Biotec ended at Rs47.30, up 0.21 per cent with around 64,245 shares traded on the BSE. Jupiter Biosciences closed at Rs 83.10 (BSE), up 5.59 per cent with around 1.87 lakh shares traded.
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