Saturday, January 29 2005 11:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The bourses witnessed a strong price rally after initial weakness and soared by 3.81 per cent in the week under review, bolstered by announcements of excellent third quarter performance by blue chip corporates as well as high expectations from forthcoming union budget.

In the week to January 29, the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) Benchmark 30-share Index bounced back from its early lows of 6069.33 and surged up to end the week above 6400-mark at 6419.09 as against last weekend's close of 6183.24, a net rise of 235.85 points.

The sensex even scored the biggest gain of 179.66 points since May 18, 2004 when it had risen by 371.86 points.

The weekend upswing was largely credited to announcement of better-than-expected third quarter results by State Bank of India, which also bucked the trend in the banking sector.

The strong recovery after a four-week gap, was considered to be related to derivatives market as operators were engaged in squaring up of positions right from Tuesday (Jan 25, 2005) onwards while institutional investors confined to a smooth roll-over to the new contract in Futures and Options (F&O).

The bullish fervor in the new derivatives contract was also seen as a pre-budget rally on optimism that the Government would present a market-friendly budget.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which reported net sales of Rs 440.40 crore in the first two sessions, made fairly good purchases of Rs 198.80 crore on January 27 and were believed to be the principal force behind Friday's (Jan 28, 2005) rally.

The Government's decision to sell 10 per cent equity in BHEL and 7.5 per cent stake in Maruti Udyog next fiscal, only indicated its commitment to disinvestment programme.

Meanwhile, inflation fell to a 33-week low of 5.42 per cent for the week ended January 15.

SBI, Tata Motor, Tata Steel, Wipro, Steel Authority, HLL, Satyam Computers, RIL, Ranbaxy, PNB, Maruti Udyog, Mah & Mah, Hexaware Tech, GACL, Grasim, Bharti Tele-Venture, Infosys Tech, BHEL and Dr Reddy's were among the impressive gainers.

Among other indices, the broad-based BSE-100 Index flared up by 127.72 points to end the week at 3482.16 as against last weekend's close of 3324.44.

The BSE-200 index and the Dollex-200 were quoted sharply higher at 850.45 and 323.42 at the weekend compared to previous weekend's close of 817.18 and 310.76 respectively.

The BSE-500 Index spurted sharply by 102.29 points to close the week at 2670.73 from last weekend's close of 2568.44 and the Dollex-30 finished the week remarkably up at 1203.76 from 1159.53 at the last weekend.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the S&P CNX Nifty and the S&P CNX Defty zoomed by 83.00 points and 63.25 points to end the week at 2008.30 and 1589.15 as against preceding weekend's close of 1925.30 and 1525.90 respectively. The CNX Nifty Junior jumped by 101.00 points to conclude the week at 4200.70 from 4099.70 at the previous weekend.

The total volume of business on the BSE and NSE was relatively high at Rs 8,670 crore and Rs 20,234 crore compared to last week's turnover of Rs 8,274 crore and Rs 18,751 crore respectively.