Sensex breaches 12500 mark, second highest close

Mumbai, Oct 12: The Bombay Stock Exchange Senseitive Index (Sensex) touched the second highest figure to close 184 points up at 12,537.98, as investors short covered positions later during the day.

Similarly the S&P CNX Nifty too turned positive by 62.50 points to 3621.05. Such was the level of short covering that the Nifty futures turned from 10 points discount to 10 points premium.

Another shot in the arm was manufacturing and industrial figures for the month of August, which grew by 11.7 and 10 per cent respectively.

The sensex today touched a three-month high of 12,558.71 and a low of 12,325.02, showing a swing of 233.69 points, as sensex was quite laid back for the first two hours. It, however, picked up later on short covering.

The breadth too in the market was positive in favour of 1,412 advances as against 1,072 declines, out of 2548 scrips that traded on the BSE counters today.

Midcap and the Smallcap were once again in business with 0.78 and 1.08 per cent gains wittnessed today. BSE clocked a turnover of Rs 3469.08 crores.

Meanwhile, the declining crude price which touched USD 57.34 per barrel mark, impacted the precious metals sector, and gold and silver declined. However the base metals held strong on the London Metals Exchange, resulting in 2.64 per cent gain in the Metals indices on the BSE.

IT sector, as yesterday, was up 2.27 per cent and the Technology sector by 2.06 per cent. Other sectors showing resurgence were Consumer Durables up by 2.14 per cent and Oil and Gas up by 1.97 per cent.

Leading the pack of gainers on BSE-30 index were HDFC up by 4.19 per cent to Rs 1499.90, TCS up by 3.63 per cent to Rs 1,082.90, Wipro up by 3.17 per cent to Rs 545.65, Bajaj Auto up by 2.68 per cent to Rs 3,147.55, Maruti Udyog up by 2.47 per cent to Rs 957.45, SBI up by 2.44 per cent to Rs 1,029.40, Reliance Communications up by 2.35 per cent to Rs 345.95, Grasim industies up by 2.33 per cent to Rs 2,631.60, Reliance Industries up by 2.30 per cent to Rs 1,169.50 and Hindalco up by 2.28 per cent to Rs 175.20.

The losers on the index were HLL down by 1.28 per cent to Rs 232.15, HDFC bank down by 0.63 per cent to Rs 958.90 and Hero Honda down by 0.03 per cent to Rs 748.00.

UNI