Sensex surges 183 pts on derivatives expiry day, but ends below 26,000

Local shares clocked gains after a two-session fall, as investors squared off their positions on the last day of the current month’s (November) futures & options (F&O) expiry, with sharp upsurge in other Asian markets helping the sentiment stay upbeat through the session. [caption id=“attachment_2522648” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] As investors covered their position in several metals, energy, auto and IT shares, the Sensex surged 240 points intra-day to top the crucial 26,000-mark and touch a high of 26,016.04. Despite some erosion of its early gains, the 30-share BSE S&P Sensex finally ended the session at 25,958.63, up 182.89 points, or 0.7 percent from previous close. The broader 50-stock CNX Nifty closed at 7,883.80, up 52.20 points, or 0.7 percent. Market breadth ended positive with 1,622 stocks advancing against 1,049 declines on BSE. All the second-rung non-benchmark indices also ended in positive territory with BSE mid-cap gaining 0.3 percent and Small-cap index ending 0.4 percent higher. Other Asian gauges such as Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.5 percent, while China’s Hang Seng rose 1 percent even as Shanghai Composite ended a tad lower after initial gains. Also, key European gauges notched up signficant gains to rise around a percent in their mid-day trades. Stock market experts and traders said the focus from here on will be on the proceedings of the Winter Session of Parliament and whether the government this time will be able to pass the contentitious GST bill to revive investor sentiment. Although, most of them don’t expect any smooth going for the government in this Winter session, any indication of the passage of the key bill would trigger a sharp rally in the markets, said dealers. However, traders said the near-to-medium term trend may exhibit a range-bound trend with a negative bias in the wake of global markets uncertainty and overhang of a likely US rate hike next month. Among the gainers in the Sensex space, shares of Tata Motors jumped 5.5 percent to Rs 423.15, Sun Pharma rose nearly 4 percent to Rs 735.95, GAIL gained 3.3 percent to Rs 367.70, M&M jumped 2.1 percent to Rs 1,345.10 and Reliance Industries was up 2 percent at Rs 987.70. Other performers such as ITC, Hindalco, Tata Steel, HeroMoto Corp, NTPC, Infosys, Wipro, Coal India and ONTC were up 1-2 percent each.