The Hindu Business Line : Sensex upbeat, rises 281 pts

Mumbai, Sept. 24 The stock markets rose for the fifth day in a row on Monday, with the Bombay Sensitive Index registering its fourth consecutive closing high at 16,845.83, leading some investors to wonder how long the party would last.

The Sensex rose by 1.7 per cent, gaining 281.60 points. The broader based S&P CNX Nifty registered an even higher rise, of 1.96 per cent, closing at 4932.20.

When markets are taken up by global events, there is a lot of energy that continues to drive them, said Mr Raamdeo Agrawal, who heads Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

There was a lot of short covering by hedge funds and massive buying in stocks, mainly in the large blue-chips, he said. “New investors also tend to buy the blue-chip stocks and we continue to see a lot of new money coming into the markets. That is why you see blue chips making such large daily gains, the gains that are usually associated with mid-cap companies.”

“Today’s rise was mainly because of liquidity in the market and short covering by investors,” said Ms Anita Gandhi, Head of Institutional Sales with Arihant Capital Markets Ltd.

With the exception of IT scrips and a couple of stocks such as Dr Reddy’s and ITC, most of the Sensex stocks rose.

Among the top gainers were the Reliance companies from both the Mukesh and Anil Ambani folds.

Among the notable gainers were auto stocks with Maruti Udyog turning out to be the second largest Sensex gainer for the day, rising 5.45 per cent, while Bajaj Auto rose 3.07 per cent. “Auto stocks were up in advance of the festive season which sees a traditional rise in vehicle sales,” said a broker.

All the BSE indices rose with the exception of BSE IT. The BSE Oil & Gas index was up 3.33 per cent, BSE Bankex 2.54 per cent, BSE PSU 2.3 per cent and BSE Auto 2 per cent. BSE Realty, which had been among the top gainers over the last three trading days, continued its rise northwards, gaining 2.03 per cent.

IT stocks slid as the rupee scaled a new peak against the dollar. Infosys was down 3.22 per cent, Satyam down 2.32 per cent, and TCS down 0.89 per cent.