Sensex closes 70 pts up; weekly gains at 5%

The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty rebounded quite smartly in late trade on Friday that helped them to close higher in all sessions of the week. The market saw highest ever weekly absolute gains in 2012, with the Nifty rising 4.7% and the Sensex 5%.

Looking at the sharp recovery, it seems that the market is closely watching big events that will happen next week: Industrial output data for April on June 12, inflation for May on June 14 while globally the Greece election on June 17.

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Today, the BSE benchmark recovered 234 points from intraday low of 16,485.02, before closed up 69.82 points at 16,718.87. Meanwhile, the NSE benchmark rebounded from intraday low of 4,994.80, which ended up 18.70 points at 5,068.35.

Recovery in European markets and Indian rupee, and short covering helped the market to bounce back today.

At 15:45 hours IST, the rupee fell 50 paise to 55.44 as against the US dollar, which recovered 25 paise from day's low of 55.69 a dollar.

RBI policy will be announced on June 18. The rally in the week gone by was on hopes that the RBI may consider 50 basis points cut in repo rate instead of 25 bps to revive slowing economic growth.

The BSE Bankex jumped 8% this week while today 0.5%. Country's largest lender State Bank of India rose 0.56% while private sector lender HDFC Bank went up 0.2%. Kotak Mahindra Bank and PNB gained 1.5-2% whereas ICICI Bank closed flat.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries was up 1.2%. Private steel company Sterlite Industries topped the buying list for second consecutive session today, rising 3.5%.

FMCG majors ITC and HUL rallied over 1.3%. Engineering and construction major by sales Larsen & Toubro surged 2.5% while state-owned capital goods company BHEL rose 1.6%.

State-owned gas transportation services provider GAIL jumped over 3%. Top telecom operator Bharti Airtel and country's largest commercial vehicle maker Tata Motors moved up 1% each.

Reliance Infrastructure was among the top five most active stocks, rising 4%.

However, software services exporters Infosys and TCS were down 1.4% and 0.75%, respectively. PSU oil & gas producer ONGC was down 1.4%.

In the second line shares, JM Financial shot up 13%. Sun TV and AP Paper Mills rose 9% each. Tata Coffee, HDIL, IVRCL and Jet Airways rallied 6% each. Rallis India was up 5% and NCC gained 3.5%.

However, India Cements fell nearly 5% as the company received CBI notice w.r.t. water allocation at 2 plants in Andhra Pradesh.

The broader markets closed marginally higher while the market breadth was neutral.

On the global front, France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE trimmed losses, falling 0.5% each after weak economic data.

Italy's industrial output for April declined 1.9% month-on-month and 9.2% year-on-year, which was higher than expectations of (down) 0.5% MoM and 6.4% YoY.

Greece's industrial output for April went down 2.2% YoY.

Asian markets too closed 0.5-1% lower, but Nikkei tanked over 2% due to fall in current account surplus.