Mid Market Commentary

The market is little firm with good amount of gain backed by heavy buying is seen across the board mainly led by the Metal, Capital Goods and Oil & Gas stocks. The Metal index is the top performer till afternoon trade as most buying is seen in these stock. The Metal index has touched an intraday high of 17,949.96.

The overall market breadth is positive as 1665 stocks are advancing while 890 stocks are declining and 83 stocks remained unchanged on BSE.

At 12.30 pm, BSE Sensex was at 19,685.10 up by 94.32 points and Nifty was at 5,870.35 up by 23.05 points. The Mid cap is higher by 74.66 points at 8,150.47 and the small Cap advanced by 108.24points to trade at 9,955.26.

BSE Banks index advanced by 116.64 points to trade at 11,124.59. The major gainers are PNB (1.62%), HDFC Bank (1.17%), ICICI Bank (0.63%) and SBI (0.58%).

BSE Metal index surged 546.71 points to trade at 17,948.40. The major gainers are Hindalco Industries (6.52%), Sterlite Industries (5.25%), NALCO (3.30%) and SAIL (1.95%).

BSE Oil & Gas index was trading 280.54 points higher at 11,786.08 as GAIL (2.99%), ONGC (1.62%), HPCL (1.22%) and BPCL (0.58%) are trading lower.

ONGC is planning to invest approximately Rs 10,000 Crore in its ageing Mumbai High oil and gas fields to increase output to 300,000 barrels per day by the end of 2008.

BSE Capital goods index improved 379.08 points to 20.431.36. The main gainers are BHEL (2.15%), ABB (2.04%), L&T (1.63%) and Suzlon Energy (1.19%).

L&T has formed a joint venture with Japan''s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to make steam turbines and generators for the power sector. The joint venture includes a capital outlay of about Rs 880 Crores. It will cater to power plants with a capacity of 500MW to 1,000MW.

BSE IT index up by 20.83 points to trade at 4,587.96 as Infosys (0.86%), HCL Tech. (0.65%), and Wipro (0.21%) are trading higher.