Oil & gas, infra, private banks drive Nifty to 5850

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The benchmark Sensex added around 200 points today at 11:58 hours to the total of more than 1600 points consistent gains -- aided by more than a billion dollar inflow of funds from foreign institutional investors -- since March 22, supported by oil & gas, infrastructure, FMCG, private financial, metal, realty and select cement companies' shares.

"The valuations neither cheap nor expensive," Nilesh Shah, president (corporate banking) of Axis Bank said. "It is a market where one has to be a bit more stock specific rather than broad market specific."

Shah said there are contrarian investments coming into the market. "There was some bottom fishing done by the long-only funds," he said.  

The 30-share BSE Sensex rallied 210 points to 19,500 and the 50-share NSE Nifty jumped 60 points to 5,848. The Nifty April futures were trading near 5900 level.

A concern for the market has been the surging oil prices. However, Shah is doubtful that crude will go significantly higher from current levels. "Commodity prices likely to have peaked out," he said. London Brent crude continued to traded in a range of USD 114-116 a barrel.

Leading players - TCS, L&T, ONGC, Infosys and HUL gained 2-3%. Reliance Industries, ITC, NTPC, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, HDFC and BHEL were up around 1.5%. Hero Honda surged 4%.

However, M&M, Reliance Communications, Cipla, Bharti Airtel, Maruti Suzuki and Reliance Power were the top losers, with losing 1-3%.

SBI, Titan Industries, Tata Coffee, ARSS Infra, Smartlink Network, Infosys, L&T and ICICI Bank were the most active shares on exchanges.

In midcap space, Bajaj Corp, Glodyne Tech, Sunteck Realty, South Indian Bank and KEC International surged 5-10%. However, KGN Industries, Himadri Chemical, Shree Global, JM Financial and Gillette India lost 3-5%.

In smallcap space, AP Paper Mills shot up 20% for second consecutive day due to deal with International Paper. KNR Construction, Kaveri Seed, Lloyd Electric and Ind-Swift Labs gained 8-17%.

However, R M Mohite, Chromatic India, Zenith Infotech, India Securities and Fame India were down 4-5%.

About 1421 shares advanced as against 996 shares declined on the Bombay Stock Exchange.