Market wipes out week’s loses with Friday surge

The Sensex rose 419.02 points on Friday and in doing so, swung the pendulum for the week into positive territory once more after a week spent largely in the red. The week has ended with gains of 243 points for the bellwether index.

Prior to Friday’s rise, the Sensex had been steadily falling for three out of four days and looked to end the week in the red for the second time running. It had effectively dropped by 176.27 points prior to Friday.

There had been concerns on the valuation front as the markets ran up on expectations from the budget. “The markets seem fairly valued at between 13,000 to 14,000. The view on the markets are still positive although expectations of an overnight recovery seem stretched” said Mr Saibal Ghosh, chief investment officer (CIO), Aegon Religare Life Insurance.

Foreign Institutional Investors were net buyers by Rs.551.14 crore while domestic institutions bought equities worth Rs. 333.95 crore on Friday.

The days’ surge of 2.92% had the Sensex closing at 14,764.64.

Healthcare closed in the red, dropping by 1.49%. All other sectoral indices showed gains over their previous close. Banking and Capital Goods led the gainers rising by 4.31% and 4.17% respectively.

The Nifty rose by 3.15% or 133.65 points to close at 4375.50 by the close of trade.

ICICI Bank was the top performer of the day, gaining 8.02% to close at Rs.756.15 compared to the previous close of Rs.700. Sterlite and Jindal Steel also made it to the gainers list. Sterlite rose 6.48% to close at Rs. 613.75 while Jindal Steel rose 5.82% to close at Rs. 2444.60.

Sun Pharma and Ranbaxy were the top losers for the day. Sun Pharma was down 11.64% to close at Rs. 1141.15 while Ranbaxy lost 4.08% to close at Rs.255.10. Tata Steel also lost 2.83% to close at Rs. 388.55.

There were 45 advances to 5 declines among the fifty stock that compromise the Nifty.