Expect Sensex to touch 20,000 and Nifty to touch 6,000

The domestic market opened higher after taking a breather on Friday, supported by positive global cues. The Sensex opened 54 points higher at 19,474 and the Nifty at 5,842, up 16 points over its previous close. Auto, IT, metals and healthcare counters witnessed good demand in early trade.

Last week's gains induced investors to indulge in profit booking with the indices touching the day's lows at around 10.45am. The Sensex lost 25 points from its opening level to touch 19,449 at its intra-day low, while the Nifty fell nine points from its opening to 5833.

A fresh bout of buying led the indices higher in noon trade. The northward journey continued in the post-noon session on early gains in the European markets and a rise in US stock futures. The benchmarks touched the day's high around 2.45pm, with the Sensex gaining 310 points at 19,730 and the Nifty up 93 points at 5919. While the indices pared some of these gains, they end with highly substantial gains. The Sensex closed at 19,702, up 281 points and the Nifty closed with gains of 82 points at 5,908. The advance-decline ratio on the National Stock Exchange was positive 1244:180. We now expect the Sensex to hit 20,000 before hitting a short-term barrier; Nifty will hit 6,000.

The broader indices also had a decent close. The BSE Mid-cap index gained 1.67% and the BSE Small-cap index jumped 2.83%.

All sectoral gauges closed higher with the BSE Capital Goods (up 2.38%) as the top gainer. BSE IT (up 2.18%), BSE TECk (up 1.84%), BSE Auto (up 1.83%) and BSE Bankex (up 1.78%) were the other major gainers.

Mahindra & Mahindra (up 4.75%), Jaiprakash Associates (up 3.25%), BHEL (up 2.84%), HDFC Bank (up 2.78%) and TCS (up 2.70%) were the top performers on the Sensex. On the other hand, Reliance Communications (down 2.24%), Hindustan Unilever (down 1.62%) and Cipla (down 1.51%) were the noteworthy losers.  

State-owned oil firms will lose a whopping Rs1,74,000 crore on selling fuel at government-controlled rates this fiscal, 68% more than what they lost when crude oil touched an all-time high in 2008-09.

The revenue loss will be the highest-ever, even more than what they lost in 2008-09 when crude oil touched an all-time high of $147 per barrel. The three oil firms currently lose Rs16.76 per litre on diesel, Rs28.33 a litre on kerosene and Rs315.86 per 14.2-kg domestic LPG cylinder.

Markets in Asia settled mostly higher on signs of steady growth in the global economy. However, the Seoul Composite edged lower, pulled down by refining stocks after SK Energy said on Sunday that it would lower petroleum and diesel prices slightly for three months, to help government efforts to tame inflation.

The Hang Seng surged 1.46%, the KLSE Composite added 0.01%, the Nikkei 225 gained 0.11% and the Straits Times advanced 0.65%. On the other hand, the Jakarta Composite declined 0.20% and the Seoul Composite lost 0.24%. The Shanghai Composite was closed for trade on account of a local holiday and will re-open on Wednesday.

Back home, foreign institutional investors were net buyers of stocks worth Rs415.28 crore on Friday. On the other hand, domestic institutional investors were net sellers of shares worth Rs412.63 crore.

Wipro Technologies, the global IT business of Wipro (up 0.99%), a leading Information technology, consulting and outsourcing company, on Friday announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the global oil and gas information technology practice of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), for an all-cash consideration of around $150 million, subject to adjustments.

SAIC's global oil and gas information technology practice provides consulting, system integration and outsourcing services to global oil majors with significant domain capabilities in the areas of digital oil field, petro-technical data management and petroleum application services addressing the upstream segment.

Announcing its provisional results, state-owned BHEL reported a 39.66% growth in profit after tax to Rs6,021 crore for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2011 compared to Rs4,311 crore in the year-ago period. The company's total turnover increased to Rs43,451 crore in the 2010-11 fiscal from Rs34,154 crore in the previous year. The stock gained 2.84% at the end of the session.

Fortis Malar Hospitals today said it has taken over operations and management of cardiac centre at 170-bed Oasis Hospitals in Sri Lanka. Fortis Malar Hospitals, which is a subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare (India) (up 3.19%) did not give any details of the financial involved.

The Colombo-based centre has been renamed as 'Fortis Oasis Cardiac Centre', Fortis Malar Hospitals said. The cardiac centre will be fully equipped to cover all aspects of cardiac care ranging from prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitated cardiac care.