Sensex up 185 pts on broad-based rally

Mumbai, Oct 5 (UNI) In a broad-based buying at the heavywieght counters, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive index (Sensex) shrugged previous two days losses and jumped 185 points to close at 12,389.41.

The Sensex started the day on a positive note by the Federal Reseve Chairman Ben Bernanke who said that housing rates in US have come down and have been resposible for the decline in the growth rates.

This led to emergence of buying in the heavyweight counters of Capital Goods, where L&T, HCL and ITC gained enormously on volume trade.

Bankex gained 2.34 per cent, IT 2.43 per cent, Teck gained 1.92 and Auto was up by 1.50 per cent.

Today's strong performance on the Sensex was backed by total value and volume of shares traded, which touched Rs 755.70 crore in value and Rs 1.22 crore in volume.

The breadth in the broader market, too, stayed positive in favour of 1,839 advances as against 63 declines out of total 2,583 scrips that traded the BSE counters today.

Meanwhile, the crude oil price rose minimally to touch US dollar 59.15 per barrel mark.

Major gainers on the BSE-30 index were HDFC Bank, which was up by 3.98 per cent to Rs 928.00, Infosys Technology up by 3.47 per cent to Rs 1,865.75, Gujarat Ambuja up by 3.21 per cent to Rs 120.70, Tata Steel up by 2.68 per cent to Rs 537.35, Reliance Communications up by 2.56 per cent to Rs 348.30, SBI up by 2.38 per cent to Rs 1,029.10, Wipro up by 2.32 per cent to Rs 520.90, L&T up by 2.31 per cent to Rs 1,262.35, Grasim Industries up by 2.25 per cent to Rs 2,547.40 and Cipla up by 1.88 per cent to Rs 257.10.

Among the losers were Bharti Airtel, which was down by 0.48 per cent to Rs 459.10, Reliance Energy down by 0.33 per cent to Rs 482.50 and Dr Reddy's Lab down by 0.11 per cent to Rs 711.80.

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