Sensex recovers by 536 pts on global cues

On Thursday, the stock market bounced back from its lows and reversed a five-session losing streak with the BSE Sensex closing 536 points or 4.36% higher at 13,112. It had sunk to a new low for 2008 in its previous trading session and market players said there was some bargain hunting witnessed in the markets with many blue-chip stocks available at multi-year lows. Significant drop in crude oil price coupled with some amount of short-covering from institutional players, post the turnaround, also helped the indices move northward, brokers and dealers said.
Investors saw their wealth increase by nearly Rs 88,000 crore with the BSE’s market capitalization now at Rs 42.2 lakh crore. The overall market breadth was positive with 1,536 stocks on the BSE closing higher compared to 1,081 laggards. The day’s gains however were restricted to large-cap indices, with the broader indices not gaining as much. The BSE mid-cap index closed 1.3% higher and the small-cap index moved up by just 1%.
During the day, the government released the inflation figure for the week ended July 5, which came in at 11.91%, compared to 11.89% in the previous week. Post the release of the inflation data, the finance ministry said that inflation has stabilized.
The government has decided to release the inflation figures on Thursday evenings henceforth rather than at noon on Fridays. There were concerns about leakage of sensitive data on inflation and also the government wanted to prevent traders and investors from overreacting to the data. Over the past few weeks as inflation soared to record highs, the trading sessions on Friday were marked by a high degree of volatility.
On Thursday, among the sectoral indices, the banking index was the biggest gainer after being beaten down in the previous trading sessions. The index moved up by over 6%. Other indices like capital goods and realty bounced back.