Sensex opens on positive note at 13,630.54 pts

Mumbai, Sep 24: On Wednesday, Sep 24 the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) bench mark index Sensex opened on a positive note at 13,630.54 points, after a dismal late trade nosedive overnight, ending 425 points in the negative. Opening with a small gain of 60.23 points in the morning, the 30-share index was up 153.76 points to 13,724.07 from its last finish on fresh speculative demand from foreign institutional investors (FII).

Brokers said ''Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to infuse USD five billion in Goldman Sachs Group, boosted the bourses in early trade today. Power and realty stocks rose. The market breadth was positive.'' Asian markets witnessed mixed trade, with key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea were marginally and those of Japan and Taiwan curving down.

The S &P CNX Nifty index on National Stock Exchange (NSE), however, resumed flat at 4,125.75 points from its last close. Later it was up at 4,174.75.

The BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.62 pc at 5,144.86 and the BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.42 per cent at 6,118.50. Reliance Industries rose 1.16 pc to Rs 2,035.15.

The realty stocks rose. Indiabulls Real Estate was up 2.82 pc to Rs 215.20, followed by Unitech (up by 0.89 pc to Rs 124.90) and DLF (up by 1.7 pc to Rs 401.90) -- edged higher.

Power stocks also rose. Reliance Power gained 1.62 pc to Rs 162.65, Reliance Infrastructure was up 1.39 pc to Rs 876, NTPC gained 1.2 pc to Rs 182.20, PowerGrid Corporation of India moved up 0.99 pc to Rs 92, and Tata Power Company hiked by 1.22 pc to Rs 1,034.15.

But Satyam Computer Services was down 3.18 pc to Rs 321.10, Wipro (down 2.16 pc to Rs 382), Bharti Airtel (down 1.66 pc to Rs 781.95), ACC (dropped 0.36 pc to Rs 623.95) and ONGC (down 0.77 pc to Rs 1,047) edged lower among the Sensex pack.

Trade will be suspended from today at 1125 hrs to 1210 hrs due to disruption in satellite link following sun outage. Trading will go on upto 1615 hrs as against the normal closing of 1545 hrs. The arrangement would be on till October eight.

UNI