Market opens on a firm note

The market surged in early trade before paring gains. Realty, power stocks rose. Banking stocks gained ahead of the inflation data due today. Reliance Energy and Bharat Heavy Electricals were major gainers from Sensex pack. The market breadth was strong.

Firm Asian markets boosted domestic bourses. Asian stocks rose today, 11 April 2008, after Banc of America Securities upgraded the US semiconductor sector and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's largest retailer, raised its profit forecast. Key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and Taiwan were up by between 0.74% to 2.76%.

At 10:24 IST, the 30-share BSE Sensex was up 81.04 points or 0.52% at 15,776.14. The Sensex gained 202.01 points at day’s high of 15,897.11, hit in early trade.

The S&P CNX Nifty was up 24.8 points or 0.52% at 4757.80.

The BSE Mid-Cap index was up 1.06% at 6,547.32 and the BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.95% at 8,107.17.

The market breadth was strong: On BSE, 1246 stocks gained, 339 stocks declined and 23 stocks were unchanged.

Realty stocks rose. DLF (up 1.31% to Rs 607.90), Indiabulls Real Estate (up 3.39% to Rs 486.50) and Unitech (up 1.29% to Rs 266.50) edged higher.

Power stocks rose. NTPC (up 0.67% to Rs 187.25), Reliance Energy (up 3.58% to Rs 1,298.20), Tata Power Company (up 2.1% to Rs 1,224.90) edged higher. India's second largest power utility by revenue Reliance Energy rose 3.28% to Rs 1,294.50 after the company said on 10 April 2008 it has spent about a third of the Rs 800 crore ($200 million) allocated for buying back shares from the stock market.

Banking stock rose ahead of inflation data due today. HDFC Bank (up 1.77% to Rs 1,349), ICICI Bank (up 1.94% to Rs 816.50) and State Bank of India (up 0.63% to Rs 1,672.40) edged higher.

Jaiprakash Associates (up 1.5% to Rs 216), Satyam Computer services (up 1.45% to Rs 429.60) ,Bharat Heavy Electricals (up 1.4% to Rs 1,790), ICICI Bank (up 1.38% to Rs 812), Wipro (up 1.32% to Rs 412) edged higher from the Sensex pack.

India’s largest IT exporter by sales Tata Consultancy Services declined 0.08% to Rs 900 and was the lone loser from Sensex pack.

India’s largest private sector firm by market capitalization and oil refiner Reliance Industries rose 1.07% at Rs 2,494.

The government will today release data on industrial production for February 2008. Data released early this month which showed an improvement in infrastructure sector growth has raised expectation of improvement in industrial production for the month. Industrial production growth had slumped to 5.3% in January 2008. Infrastructure sector which account for nearly 27% of industrial output, grew 8.7% in February 2008, much faster than a downwardly revised 3.1% growth in January 2008. Industrial production accounts for about a fifth of gross domestic product (GDP).