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S. Muralidhar

THE yo-yoing sentiment in the market led to a partial recovery on Tuesday. Stock prices retraced some of the lost ground on the back of a rally in banking PSUs and old economy counters.

Some of the major gainers during the day were public sector banking stocks and PSU oil companies. The overall positive sentiment seemed to have crept back into the market, despite the poor showing of a few information technology stocks on Tuesday.

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However, many infotech stocks witnessed buying support and as a result inched up marginally to higher levels. The return of buying support was also witnessed in a few FMCG, automotive and tractor company stocks, thanks to the met office's projections that the monsoon will arrive on time this year.

The biggest gainers on the Bombay Stock Exchange were Oriental Bank, IBP, Bayer Cropscience, Arvind Mills, Hexaware Technologies, Federal Bank, Novartis Industries and Corporation Bank.

The BSE Sensex opened lower at 3,032 points and drifted to an intra-day low of about 3,025. Institutional buying support in the afternoon took the index up to 3,062.92 points, a 19 points increase.

The major gainers among the 30 Sensex stocks on Tuesday were Infosys Technologies (up 2.62 per cent), BSES Ltd (up 5.88 per cent), Satyam Computers, Zee Telefilms (up 3.29 per cent), Hero Honda (up 3.45 per cent), Reliance Industries, Glaxo Smithkline, Grasim Industries, Tata Iron and Steel, State Bank of India and Colgate-Palmolive.

Among the losers were many counters that gained on Monday's session. These included ICICI Bank, HDFC, MTNL, Larsen & Toubro, Bajaj Auto, HCL Technologies and Dr Reddy's Laboratories.

The 50-share Nifty index of the National Stock Exchange climbed marginally lower 0.52 per cent on Tuesday. The Nifty closed the day's session at 971.55 points compared to the previous day's 966.55 points. The broader S&P CNX 500 index of the NSE closed higher by 1.20 per cent reflecting a more wide-ranging improvement in stock valuations.

Among the gainers in the Nifty, which did not feature among the Sensex stocks that closed higher, were Mahindra & Mahindra, Sun Pharmaceuticals and Indian Hotels. The prominent Nifty losers were National Aluminium Company, HDFC Bank, VSNL, ABB and BHEL.

PSU stocks led by banking stocks fared well in the markets on Tuesday. The Oriental Bank stock hit double-digit growth numbers on Tuesday and closed at Rs 134.45, up 14.82 per cent. The other PSU banks stocks that registered gains on Tuesday were Canara Bank (up 5.81 per cent), Punjab National Bank (up 6.33 per cent), Bank of Baroda (up 6.03 per cent), Corporation Bank (up 6.17 per cent), State Bank of India, Andhra Bank, Union Bank, and Indian Overseas Bank. However, the banking stocks that reported a marginal decline in values were Bank of India, IDBI Bank, and Dena Bank.

Oil PSU stocks were also sought after by institutions on Tuesday and renewed buying support pushed up the prices of the major oil marketing and producing companies. The IBP stock hit pay dirt with a massive 10.3 per cent jump in price. Among the other gainers in the oil sector were Chennai Petroleum, Kochi Refineries, ONGC (up 4.91 per cent), Indian Oil Corporation (up 2.81 per cent), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (up 1.23 per cent) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation.

Among infotech stocks GTL was up 5.16 per cent and Moser Baer was up 1.59 per cent, after the announced pricing plans to tackle the anti-dumping duty rate hike proposed by the European Commission to prevent dumping of CD-Rs from India. Other IT gainers were Wipro, Digital Global, Polaris Lab and NIIT.

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