Foreign funds lift Sensex above 20,000 points again (Roundup)

MUMBAI - The surge in Indian equities market lifted a key index above the psychologically-important 20,000-point mark Tuesday for the first time in 32 months as foreign funds continued to pump in big dollars.

Soon after the opening bell at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the 30-share sensitive index (Sensex) shot up to 20,088.96 points, the highest in 32 months. This was for the first time since Jan 17, 2008, the index breached the 20,000-point mark.

The index surged 2,100 points in a matter of just 15 trading sessions.

Profit taking thereafter resulted in some steady losses for the index, which fell to the day’s low of 19,860.88 points some two hours into trading. Then began a rally, taking the index to end the day at 20,001.55 points.

At this level, the barometer index was up 95.45 points, or 0.48 percent, over the previous close at 19,906.10 points. The all-time high for the index is 21,206.77 which was reached Jan 10, 2008.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the 50-share S&P CNX Nifty, breached at 6,000-point mark and closed at 6008.25, with a gain of 27.80 percent or 0.46 prcent.

“Demand for Indian equities is not restricted within our boundaries,” said Alex Mathews, research head of Geojit BNP Paribas, a financial services company.

“The same buying interest has been seen in Indian ADR’s like Rediff and Sify which had made record gains of around 150 percent and 66 percent in the last 12 trading sessions,” Mathews added.

“The overbought situation will bring a good amount of volatility in the coming days with Sensex 14-day relative strength index (an indicator of market weakness-to-strength on a scale of 0-100) moving above 81.99 for the first time since October 2007.”

Monday had seen the Sensex gain 311.35 points or 1.59 percent at 19,906.1 points over the previous close at 19,594.75 points, with foreign funds pouring in $373.25 million into the markets.

In the current month, these funds have invested over $3 billion in the Indian equities market, taking their net buying of equities to $11.59 billion in the current calendar year, data with the markets watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India showed.

Despite the overall gains, the number of Sensex shares ending in the red and green were evenly matched, with Tata power the top gainer, up 2.93 percent at Rs.1,301.01, while ITC lost the most ground, down 2.58 percent at Rs.172.05.

Information technology stocks were the flavour of the day, while consumer goods scrips lost ground as per data on the 13 sector-specific indices of the exchange. The day also belonged to blue chips, as both the mid-cap and small cap stock indixes lost ground.

Larsen and Toubro contributed a rise of 28.94 points in the Sensex, followed by 26.87 percent by Housing Development Finance Corp. On the flip side, ITC contributed a fall of 30.32 points, followed by 14.37 percent by Reliance Industries.