Sensex crosses 19,000 mark, opens at 19,171

Mumbai, Nov 26: The BSE index today crossed 19,000 mark at the opening session and quoted 19,171.25 points with a massive gain of 319 points from its last close of 18,852.87 points on sustained heavy speculative demand from FIIs and local financial institutional investors.

Brokers said, '' The market surged in opening trade as US shares were buoyed on November 23 by a strong start to the US holiday shopping period. Short covering ahead of the futures and options expiry this Thursday, November 29 and fresh buying at lower levels kept market buoyant.

Later, 30-share BSE Sensex moved up 435.63 points or 2.31 per cent (pc) to 19,288.50. Sensex hit a high of 19,310.56 at the onset of the trading session.

The broader based S&P CNX Nifty index of NSE also rose sharply around by 154 points or 2.56 pc to 5752.45 points from its last close of 5,608.60 points. The Nifty resumed firm at 5611.30 points. Later it recorded a high at 5758.60 and a low at 5608.95 points in intra day trade.

India's largest private sector firm by market capitalisation and oil refiner Reliance Industries gained by 1.83 pc to Rs 2866.95. The company has sold 4.01 pc of the equity share in its subsidiary company Reliance Petroleum (RPL) by transactions through the stock exchanges. The aggregate sale consideration is Rs. 4,023 crore and post-sale RIL's stake in RPL has come down to 70.99 pc from 75 pc.

Reliance Petroleum was up by 2.55 pc to Rs 214.85 on huge volumes of 43.64 lakh shares on BSE.

HDFC Bank also hiked by 5.52 pc to Rs 1649 followed by ONGC by 2.81 pc to Rs 1179.60, ICICI bank by 2.39 pc to Rs 1167.50, TCS by 2.51 pc to Rs 1165.50 and Infosys Technologies by 1.83 pc to Rs 1586.50.

Power utility Reliance Energy gained by 2.78 pc to Rs 1774.40. The company has entered into a joint venture with the country's main transmission utility Power Grid Corporation of India to execute about 300 kilometre (km) transmission lines from Parbati to Koldam and Koldam to Ludhiana. The company will have a 26 pc equity holding in the venture while Reliance Energy will have 74 pc stake.

State-run transmission utility Power Grid Corporation of India was up by 3.21 pc to Rs 156.06 on volumes of 11.59 lakh shares on BSE.

India's second largest telecom service provider Reliance Communications moved up by 1.86 pc to Rs 694.70. The company reportedly plans to sell another 5 pc stake in its wireless tower business in the second such transaction in this calendar year.

Among the sectoral indices on BSE, the BSE Bankex rose by 2.19 pc to 10,641.99 followed by the BSE Metal index by 2.95 pc to 17,083.15, the BSE Capital Goods index by 1.94 pc to 19,691.20, the BSE IT index by 1.92 pc to 4,094.11 and the BSE Realty index by 2.36 pc to 10,014.68.

Friday's US rally boosted stocks across Asia. Key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan were up by between 0.6 pc to 4.36 pc.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped by 181.84 points, or 1.42 pc, to close at 12,980.88 on November 23. The Standard&Poor's 500 Index gained by 23.93 points, or 1.69 pc to finish at 1,440.70. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced by 34.45 points, or 1.34 pc, to end at 2,596.60.

FII sales caused by redemption pressure in their home countries and fears of a US recession arising from housing slump and credit crisis had spooked stocks across Asian over the past few days.

Concerns about the health of the US economy remain, brokers added.

UNI